


Heart Break Beat

by BoxWineConfessions



Series: Heart Break Beat [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Childhood Friends, Crying During Sex, Established Relationship, Hair Pulling, Homophobic Language, M/M, Otabek is 23, Pool & Billiards, Pool Hustler AU, Underage Drinking, Valentines Day Fic, Yuri is 20, gender fluid Yuri Plisetsky, high school sweethearts, smoking mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-02-11
Packaged: 2018-09-17 14:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9328538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoxWineConfessions/pseuds/BoxWineConfessions
Summary: The door to the bar swings open, and the sharp clatter-clatter-thunk of the break of the balls rises up to meet them. As does a thick cloud of smoke. It swirls around him and Otabek. Pulls them inside and closes the door to the harsh winter night behind them. It clings to him and Otabek, like a drunken ex-lover desperate to rekindle the flame. They’ll both smell of it tomorrow when they inevitably pass out in their clothes in the early morning hours.“Hot tonight?” Otabek asks with a squeeze of his fingers.“Always baby.”Or: The pool shark AU that nobody asked for.





	1. Heart Break Beat

**Author's Note:**

> Japanesephoenix won my 900+ follower giveaway. They asked for Otayuri + explicit sex. AU was a-okay, so I'm using this as an opportunity to do my pool shark AU. I hope you like it!

Yuri flips the neon “Open” sign off, and with a long heavy sigh that starts in his aching feet, brushes across his tense shoulders, and finally slides out of his mouth says, “finally,” followed by a cursory, “fuck,” to punctuate exactly how he feels.

Yuri turns Yuuko. Her hair is sticking out of her messy bun at all sorts of odd angles. She’s wiping down tables with the same speed and vigor which she waits them, but Yuri can see. He can see the subtle way that she leans into her arm and puts too much weight into it. She’s dead tired.

“Don’t get me wrong. I am glad we made a shit ton of money, but why the hell would anybody come here for Valentines day?” Yuri snaps up the broom and dustpan that he’d discarded. Listlessly he goes through the robotic motions. Flick of the wrist to get under the table, drop the dust pan, sweep into the dustpan, and onto the next straw wrapper.

Nishi’s had the best lunch special in town. Choice of teriyaki, tempura, curry, or udon with choice of eggroll, gyoza, or potstickers plus tea for $7. Dinner was treated with the same discretion as lunch; the food was tasty and plentiful. They feed him for free here. If he and Otabek had money to burn they’d go to the city for the biggest bloodiest steaks that money could buy.

“Oh you know Yuri.” She stops what she’s doing for awhile. “You live in this town your whole life.”

Yuri mumbles under his breath, “god forbid.”

“You get married when your 17.”

Yuri mumbles again, “fuck no.”

“Have a couple kids.”

“God forbid,” he doesn’t even try to hide his distain.

Her eyes snap forward and lock with his. “Watch it now.” But she smiles at him. It’s the kind of half smile that accompanies the far away look that most of the older adults in this town get when someone talks about getting out. It’s halfway between bitter jealousy and legitimate hope that you actually do it. Yuri and Otabek used to get it a lot. Now, less so. They’re older, and people truly believe that they’re stuck.

“Anyway,” she waves her cleaning rag from side to side. “You’re not driving into the city to go somewhere nice because the baby sitter needs to be home by ten. So, you know. Something exotic. Nishi’s.”

She giggles, and it pisses him off more than the half smile and the expression. Reminds him that she didn’t plan to get knocked up, and had plans to get out too.

The longer he stays the more he realizes, it’s not the way he saw it when he was a kid. It isn’t a choice of stay or go.

_Knock knock_

There’s a soft rap at the window. Yuri abandons the broom and dustpan to go stand by the locked door. “We’re closed now asshole,” he says through the glass. He can’t help contain his smile though.

Otabek’s looking at the ashtray by the door like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Slowly, his gaze shifts to Yuri’s.  Otabek’s scarf has fallen low on his neck. Usually, even in milder winter weather he keeps it wrapped up tight around his face. What with the bike and all. Instead, Yuri can see the faint puffs of mist appear from his mouth. “Let me in,” Otabek says finally.

Yuri smashes his face to the glass and contorts his face every which way as he opens the door for his boyfriend.

Otabek pulls him into a side hug that’s too chaste and too awkward to give to Yuri on Valentines day. You don’t give that kind of hug when you’ve more or less been together for five years.

“Hey,” Yuri hugs him tight and sneaks in an ass squeeze before he can push his wandering hands away. “Don’t be like that,” he says when he pulls back and Otabek’s face is beet red. “I got you a valentine. Sit.” Yuri steers him over to a booth.

“Yuuko, don’t start vacuuming shit yet. I’ll get it in a second.” Yuri disappears into the kitchen. First, he ladles out a large bowl of broth. Then, he grabs a plate from under the heat lamp. “Thanks Takeshi,” he nods to the man who is rigorously scrubbing down the grill.

“Sure thing.” It’s a thirty dollar plate of food, but it’s not free. Yuri’s babysitting their triplets on Monday so that Yuuko and Takeshi can go out like a couple, and have dinner like a couple, and have drinks like a couple.

Yuri walks back out to the dining room only to find that Yuuko has in fact started vacuuming. “For fuck’s sake hag,” he whispers under his breath. She’s going to be bitching at him during dinner rush tomorrow that her back hurts.

Yuri deposits the plate in front of Otabek. It’s Takeshi’s finest. Peking duck, with a side of pan seared cabbage, hand pulled noodles, and bó bǐng. “Eat,” Yuri speaks into his ear so he can hear over the roar of the vacuum. I’m going to help the old hag finish up.”

Yuri turns on his heel to leave, but he’s stuck and he knows it’s not because of errant pieces of gum. He just scraped every fucking table _yesterday_ in preparation for bringing the romance today. Otabek’s caught his hand, he can feel the rough sensation of Otabek’s half gloves. Their fingers are laced tightly together.

Carefully, Otabek rotates his wrist so he can plant a kiss on Yuri’s knuckle. It’s as good as any thank you.

Yuri slides into the booth next to Otabek when he finally finishes cleaning. Takeshi and Yuuko ask him to make sure the alarm is set, and to use his key.

Without a word, Otabek pinches at a nice piece of duck breast with the crispy skin a little burned, just like Yuri likes. With more dexterity than someone who uses chopsticks sporadically should have, he feeds Yuri a piece.

Yuri accepts it.

“Want some more?” Already Otabek moves the meat around on his plate in an attempt to find Yuri another piece that is _extra_ crispy.

“No, I crammed some sweet and sour into my face at some point.”

“Yuri?” Otabek asks with the weight and intensity of a man who has just figured out the secret to everything. “The Nishigori’s are Japanese. Why do they serve so much Chinese food here?”

Yuri laughs. “Otabek, I’ve worked here for four years. You’re just now thinking about this.”

Otabek purses his lips together tightly and takes a long drink of oolong tea from the white little cup that Yuri had placed before him.

“C’mon Otabek around here? People are fucking stupid. Asian family, Asian restaurant, and of _course_ we all know that Asia is literally _just_ China.”

“They have pad Thai too,” Otabek notes dryly.

“Yeah. People like it.” Yuri slides down the booth seat and rests his leg on the opposite seat.

“No Japanese food?”

“Wow, you are really worked up about this.” Yuri steals another piece of duck with the tips of his fingers. “We have gyoza, and sometimes Takeshi makes his own udon for specials.” Yuri snakes a hand under the table and reaches into the pocket of his apron. He pulls out a stack of bills that looks fat as fuck, but by the time it’s all counted, it’s going to be sorted into stacks of mostly ones, a few fives, maybe a twenty. There was one older couple who clearly felt sorry for him. “I hate to fucking ask,” Yuri looks at him over a handful of bills. “But did you get paid?”

Otabek leans forward and pulls his wallet out of his back pocket. From the fold in the leather, he extracts four crisp one hundred dollar bills.

Yuri inhales sharply. He loves the smell of money. Like gasoline, shoe polish, fingernail polish remover, it’s got that sickly chemical smell that he shouldn’t like, because that’s how you kill braincells. Yet, he does. He loves it so much. There’s also a part of him that knows that when he shoves his thick stack against Otabek’s short one, they’re still gonna come up short even though Yuri worked a double and had the best night of his life.

His fingers slide over the bills, and with long white nails he snaps up the crumpled ones, the ones that face the wrong way, and turn them into his palm the right way. “$227,” he says dully.

Otabek pulls a few napkins from the dispenser, and steals Yuri’s pen.  Carefully he scratches down dollar amounts that Yuri immediately recognizes. $800 for the mortgage on grandpa’s house, $1300 because it’s the start of the year and grandpa hasn’t hit his deductible yet on his health insurance. $220 for the electric bill, which is includes what they had as a past due balance from last month. With impossibly neat handwriting Otabek also writes out “$150? Groceries” because that’s always something that gets picked up last.

Otabek continues to write, and considers what he will make the next time he gets paid. They can try to estimate what Yuri will make off of tips for the rest of the month, but it’s really a gamble.

“Don’t forget, I’ll make another $300 this month off classes.” His old dance instructors, Viktor and Yuuri let him teach three barre fitness classes a week during the afternoons. They’re filled with housewives and soccer moms, and all kinds of people that can really just fuck off.

But he gets access to the studio without paying, and he gets $50 a class.

Otabek scribbles down $300 in one of the columns. Then jots down another $50 in the expense column.

“What’s that?”

Otabek sighs. “Your mother’s wedding ring.” Oh right. He took it downtown and hawked it last month when Otabek’s tuition was due.

Yuri shrugs. “Let it ride.”

“She might want it.” Otabek says. He opens his mouth as if he wants to speak again, and then pinches it back shut.

“That’s implying that she’s coming back,” Yuri finishes the statement for him. They’ve all been thinking it for months now.

“You still need textbooks don’t you?” Yuri asks.

“I can keep going to the library.”

“No you can’t. You stay there too late,” Yuri leans into his shoulder. He reaches up to the crown of his head and releases the clasp of the large hot pink clip he used to keep his hair out of his face.  “That’s so much fucking better.” He says as he rakes his long white nails against his pulled-too-tight scalp.

“It will probably have to wait. Ami asked me for money.”

Yuri sits up straight as a board. “Again, are you fucking kidding me?” Yuri first met Otabek they were eight and ten respectively. He always thought that Otabek’s parents were wealthy. Otabek had a mom _and_ a dad, and both of them had jobs _always…_ until they didn’t. Otabek’s mom is a kindergarten teacher. There’s always a demand for that. His father worked as a machinist at the factory until they closed their doors and he was forced into early retirement.

Otabek’s clothes were always the right size and never looked worn. Here’s the thing though, when you’re the only boy among five children, there’s no one there to give you hand me downs. Now? Otabek’s sisters handle their shit 99% of the time. The 1% of the time they don’t? Well, they’re not exactly in a position to help out when their roommates skip town, or they marry the wrong dude, or their hours get cut.

Doesn’t stop them though. If Otabek can help so much at home, Yuri can help Ami.

Yuri sinks down into the booth and sighs. “I’m sorry,” because he knows that Otabek helps him with the myriad of baggage that _he_ brings to the relationship. It’s only fair that Yuri carry some of that weight as well. “It’s fine.”

Yuri smashes the stack of bills to his face so he can unashamedly breathe in the scent. Otabek’s eyes go wide and his brows threaten to migrate into his hairline. Yuri’s surprised that he’s surprised. It’s been five years, Otabek should know how he feels about the smell of dirty, nasty money.

“Good,” which is Otabek’s way of saying, “I already gave her the money.”

Yuri gathers up the stack of money in his hands. “We’re gonna be short?”

Otabek nods. “Definitely short.”

Yuri let’s Otabek finish his dinner in peace. Then, he takes the empty dishes back into the kitchen so that he can wash them by hand.

When he emerges from the kitchen, Otabek’s eyes lock with his. They’re heavy, and uncertain, and if he cocks his head and squints just right, gleaming with something else. It’s a glance that doesn’t ask _why_ or _how_ but moreso… _where?_

It’s a damn good question. “Charlie’s” he barks out first as he reaches for his coat in the booth.

“They took your fake ID. Then they took your other fake. They aren’t gonna let you in.”  

Well fuck and double fuck. Can he just turn twenty-one already so he doesn’t have to sneak around? “Smokers?”

“You’ve gotten kicked out for being involved in so many fist fights; they have polaroids of our faces on the wall behind the bar now so they can kick us out faster.” Otabek holds the door open for him. Yuri locks it behind them.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” his voice trails off as he considers their options. They don’t really have enough to start the night in the city. Not that Otabek would let him if they did. 

“The corner pocket!” He exclaims triumphantly as they walk hand in hand to the bike.

“Yuri, you know I’m banned for life from there.”

“Oh,” Yuri squeezes his hand. “No I just thought we were at Rounders when that happened.” Otabek and Yuri hadn’t even been hustling. Just drinking and shooting the shit all day, so by the time dusk rolled around he was thoroughly drunk. A man grabbed him, slammed him up against the wall, and put a hand between his legs before he could even understand what was going on.

Yuri remembers the man hitting the floor and little else. It was the only time he could ever say that he’d ever seen Otabek truly angry with anyone.

“Rounders?”

“Raided,” Otabek fires back.

Bennington’s then?”

Otabek nods.

“Can we stop at the house first? I need to change, and to get the McDermott. Plus, I think we should take the car. It’s too cold and it’s been raining all day.”

Otabek swings one leg over the bike and steadies it. Yuri climbs on behind him. “The cue is in the trunk.”

Oh. Fuck. Busted. “I maybe, wanted to, shoot some pool while you were in class the other night.”

“There are six cues in the basement already.” Otabek says in a matter of fact tone. He starts the engine and lets the bike cough and wheeze and expend it’s excess energy. Otabek turns his head so he can lock eyes with Yuri. His voice is loud and steady over the hum of the bike.

“Yuri, your grandfather is a very tolerant man. He didn’t say anything when the cops brought us home because _you_ got caught shoplifting Burberry lipstick from Nordstrom in middle school. He didn’t say anything when he caught us after prom.” The “naked” part of the sentence is of course implied. “When he changed over your laundry and there was a bright orange pair of lace panties on top of the basket…”

Otabek’s voice trails off, but Yuri knows where he’s going. Not a fucking word.

“I think he’s only ever gotten mad at us…Really mad at us, when he caught us Sharkey’s.” Otabek draws his mouth into a firm thin line, and Yuri fills in the details. They were stupid. So stupid. Sharkey’s was grandpa’s after work beer place for decades. So, it’s probably _not_ the place you wanna end up with $500 on the table. _Especially_ when your grandfather, did not want you hustling pool.

Otabek’s wrong though. That wasn’t the only time he’s gotten mad at them. A week before his seventeenth birthday he got picked up in an illegal gambling scheme. He didn’t speak to him for a week after the most recent black eye, but he gets Otabek’s point. Grandpa doesn’t give a shit that he’s as queer as a three dollar bill. Doesn’t mind if he walks around the house in crop tops. Looks the other way when he goes out in his red leather skirt. Doesn’t care that his boyfriend lives with them in sin while everyone else’s kid is getting married and spitting out kids of their own that they can’t feed or clothe.

“So,” Otabek continues speaking, and it commands Yuri’s attention. “Don’t leave the $300 pool cue,” Yuri knows what’s coming next, “Engraved with _a stranger’s_ name down in the basement.”

“Yeah sure whatever.”

* * *

 

Yuri tiptoes out the side door that goes into the garage with the McDermott swung over his shoulder in a case. All the way down to the basement, through the kitchen, and to the garage, he doesn’t make a sound. Of course until the very end, when the screen door slams shut behind him. His eyes go wide.

 “Shit fuck damn,” he whispers under his breath. Not that it matters now.

Otabek gives him a look. It’s not _the_ look, but it’s _a_ look. The classic, “great job Plisetsky” look that happens whenever he kind of fucks shit up. About once per hour.

“I thought you put a new battery in it.” Yuri gestures to Otabek, whose got the Buick’s hood popped. He’s staring at the engine like there’s some grand puzzle to be solved.

“I put _a_ battery in it,” Otabek corrects. He tosses Yuri the keys. “Will you get in and turn the engine on when I say so?”

“Gonna jump it?” Yuri gestures to Grandpa’s Geo Metro, a.k.a. the crumpled tin can on wheels.

Otabek nods.

“Ah geeze.” Yuri deflates a little. He grabs at the olive green door handle and slides down into the seat in one liquid smooth motion. “We’re gonna wake the old man up for sure.”

* * *

 

 “What are we doing tonight?” Otabek asks as soon as he’s killed the engine. He leans over the steering wheel like they’ve just pulled over after a street race, and he’s trying to let his breath catch up to his heart. It’s a bad sign that he feels this way already, the night has just barely begun.

Yuri folds down the passenger side visor and looks at himself in the mirror. His reflection is framed by dim vanity lights which surround the visor light. He doesn’t respond right away, as if he cannot hear the other man. Instead, he reaches into the pocket of his cracked and warped white leather jacket. From the breast pocket he extracts a tube of dollar store brand lip gloss: L.A. Colors _Just Kissed._ The tacky pink liquid smells heavy and thick like chemicals and roof tar.

“Who am I tonight? Am I the loser? The side better?” He taps his fingers against the butter smooth olive colored leather of the steering wheel.

Yuri untwists the cap and applies some of the gloss. Otabek always hates it when he wears the stuff. More so than he hates the micro glitter eyeshadow that gets all over his clothes and the bootleg Tom Ford lipstick that stains the collars of his t-shirts. He understands why though. _Just Kissed_ tastes just as thick and just as acrid as it smells. It has the opposite effect, and Yuri has to steal kisses all night long like Otabek’s the mark and _he’s_ the con.

“Mixed doubles,” Yuri responds simply.

“Mixed doubles huh?” Otabek rubs his chin, and worries his index finger in the corner of his mouth while doing it. In the dim light of the headlights, which are on timer, he stares down the “No Loitering” sign spray painted on the side of the bar in stencil with iridescent white paint.

With the far away look in his eye, Yuri can tell that he’s doing all sorts of mental gymnastics right now. He’s probably thinking about how he should’ve brought the bike if it was a mixed doubles kind of night. He probably wants a cigarette. Yuri sure the shit does, but they decided to quit together last week.

It’s been awhile, and it’s always risky. People talk. Especially when only a fraction of them are in on the dying, yet acerbic world that revolves around money stacked on pool hall rails. Word gets around real quick about the “arab” and his “fag girlfriend.” It makes it hard to get a table, even harder to get and keep money on the table. It’s risky, in a way that he knows makes Otabek’s skin crawl worse than any moldering and damp booth in the back of a bar, or back room couch.

“Yeah, I haven’t been your girl in a while.”

Naturally, it means that it’s Yuri’s favorite.

 “Should’ve shaved.” Otabek turns to Yuri and gives him that shit eating grin. The I-know-something-you-don’t-Plisetsky kind of look.  “If you wanted to be my girl tonight.”

“Fuck off,” Yuri snorts. He runs a palm over his chin and checks for stubble.  “I’m smoother than the green baby.”

“The green is fuzzy, Yuri.” Otabek responds without missing a beat. As if on cue, he opens the door to the Buick and in a single fluid motion goes to the rear passenger door for the McDermott. Then, he goes to the passenger side door, opens it, and extends his hand.

He knows that Otabek is feeling nine ways to fucked right about now, but he falls into character immediately and doesn’t miss a beat. Yuri grabs him with long elegant fingers.

The door swings open, and the sharp clatter-clatter- _thunk_ of the break rises up to meet them. As does a thick cloud of smoke. It swirls around him and Otabek. Pulls them inside and closes the door to the harsh winter night behind them. It clings to him and Otabek, like a drunken ex lover desperate to rekindle the flame. They’ll both smell of it tomorrow when they inevitably pass out in their clothes in the early morning hours.

“Hot tonight?” Otabek asks with a squeeze of his fingers.

“Always baby.”

 


	2. All of This and Nothing

There’s six tables in the back of Bennington’s. It’s only 10:00, so there’s two left. Otabek goes to the bar to get them a pair of Wild Turkey and sodas on the rocks. He pays with a ten, and doesn’t ask for change. When the drinks are this cheap, you make up the difference. The difference is the leather faced barkeeper who keeps the hard liquor flowing in long inconsistent pours. He might’ve been a handsome man once. Years of late nights, accessible drinks, and stress have left his skin an unnatural color that’s somewhere between ruddy and rust. His left eye is milky. Otabek doesn’t smile or say “your welcome” when the bartender says “thanks” to his tip. From the corner of his eye Yuri watches as Otabek moves to the one open table that sits closest to the bar. They need to be seen.

Yuri goes straight for the jukebox. He fishes around in his pocket for a quarter. He first pulls out a dime, then a nickel, then his lip gloss, and then a small handful of dried bits of tobacco shake that fall from loose cigarettes and linger in the linings of pockets, handbags, and pool cue cases. Finally, he extracts a quarter from his pocket. Slowly, he drops it into the jukebox and experimentally presses a button. The pages, lined with album covers and track listings, turn behind the window of the machine.

There’s nothing here from before 1985 or so. He goes with ABBA, “Dancing Queen.” The sharp strike of the piano quiets the bar. It’s a stark contrast to the twang and the fiddle of the Dwight Yokham honkytonk drivel he’s just interrupted. He knows that Otabek finds them both to be offensive songs…But the whole “mixed doubles” con goes like this: Otabek is a decent enough pool player accompanied by his novice date. The low level mark notices Otabek’s skill and ignores the way Yuri scratches. Otabek and the mark play for money, and the game goes back and forth between them, until Otabek good naturedly gets him in on the action.

Yuri wins once, “beginners luck.” Yuri wins two times, three times, and they’ve got all their money back and then some.  

Yuri knows that a good mark notices in the worst kind of way. He unzips the white leather jacket in time with the hum of the background singers on the track. Underneath he makes sure to flash Otabek the skin tight polyester and spandex blend shirt. It’s no one discernable color. There are loud blue, and pink, and yellow roses dotted all across it. The space in-between is filled with green leaves. It creeps up and covers his neck just below the chin in a turtle neck, but stops just after his navel. There’s a small, blink and you miss it swath of skin between the shirt and Yuri’s liquid tight jeans.  He wears a long strand of yellowed fake pearls over top of the shirt, knotted in the middle. They swing unapologetically with the sway of Yuri’s hips.

Yuri’s gonna make his man sweat, never mind the fact that the top is Goodwill and the coat was stolen from a coat check at the casino, and he _knows_ just how awful L.A. Colors tastes.

_You can dance. You can jive. Having the time of your life_

In that moment, Yuri can feel every eye turn to him, and as he approaches Otabek, turn to them. He feels blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. Male gazes alongside female ones. There are eyes clouded by cataracts, as well as eyes hidden behind large coke bottle glasses caged in aviator style frames. Most of all he feels the gaze hard and heavy that can’t accept the audacity of this person whose too feminine to be a man, and too tall and lanky to be a woman. Their stares burn as he commands their attention, and goes against everything they’ve ever been told to do. There are eyes that sting with anger, and hate, and those that sting with jealousy too.

_See that girl. Watch that scene. Digging the dancing queen._

It’s no secret that in this old and declining part of town, in this dead end dive, Yuri’s the best looking person here.

_Friday night and the lights are low._

He closes the distance between them. “Hey,” it’s hot in the bar. He’s still got his jacket on, and of course they’re pumping the heat. He’s smiling too, but it feels real.  Not the forced kind of coy smile he gives when he’s waiting tables or hanging out at the rails trying to get some greasy stranger to buy _him_ a double so he can run back to the tables and split it with Otabek (not like he’s ever done that before). It’s genuine. The one that says, “Otabek,” Yuri’s voice is husky, low and for his partner only. Although he commanded the attention of every person in the bar, it was all for him. “Let’s make some money.”

“Hm.” Otabek hands him his drink.

Yuri takes a ginger sip. Immediately, he screws his eyes shut and his mouth closed.

Otabek racks the balls with a loud lack and a rapid roll across the green. Everything in the bar is long tinged yellow by nicotine. Or severely muted in the dark patches of the bar where the dim bar lights won’t go.  Where the bar lights do reach, the colors are severely distorted.  The enamel covered balls, from one to fifteen, look like shining jeweler cut crystals in a velvet lined ring box by comparison.

“You tip him good?” Yuri asks between small sips of his drink.

“Hm.” Otabek puts the rack back on the peg near the wall. Then he looks from Yuri to the old and splintered cues on the wall.

“Which, one do I want?” He watches as Yuri’s hands drift across the lacquer of one cue to another. He gets one off the rack and holds it in his hand.

Otabek steps in closer. He takes it out of his hand and puts it back on the rack. He touches a few more cues and grabs another, longer cue off the rack. He’s got to be a mindful boyfriend after all. Show his date the best kind of cue to use before he busts out his $300 McDermott.

“You need one that’s the right weight,” he whispers into Yuri’s ear at the rack. “One that’s straight.”

Yuri lets out a very undignified snorting noise.  “How can you even say that kind of shit with a straight face?” He laughs again, because he said it again, and swear to god he’s barely even touched his drink. Otabek shuts him up with a kiss on his mouth that lingers too long. Simultaneously, he reaches for a cue. It’s a dime a dozen, and decades old maple cue stick.  “Hush,” he warns.

Yuri wipes the smeared lip gloss off of Otabek’s mouth and accepts the cue. “This one?” Yuri grasps at it, one fist over the other like hasn’t run an entire table playing one pocket, red faced and giddy after one too many cheap beers. 

“Watch.” Otabek pulls his face into a smile. Not the one that he gives Yuri on Monday mornings when he doesn’t have class, and Yuri doesn’t have work and they can lay in bed until at least noon before they sit together on the end of the bed and choose from their catalogue, something to worry about that day. It’s not the one that he gives to the inside of Yuri’s thigh while he licks and sucks big indecent reminders of his love and affection either. It’s not even the one that Otabek gives grandpa when they think Yuri’s passed out after too much cheap beer. The old man will ask for a cigarette, and Otabek will give him one with a bitter sweet smile.

It’s the smile that they keep in the side pocket of the McDermott case and share between them. The one that says, “I can make us some money too.”

Otabek gets the overpriced pool cue from the case and carefully screws the top part onto the bottom. It might have been a cue made to the specifications of another man, but it worked well between them.  At 59 inches long, it’s standard, but a bit longer than Otabek would like. It’s just long enough for Yuri’s long and lanky frame. The finish to the maple is sleek and shines, even in the dim bar light. It’s got a leather wrap on the bottom, and a needlessly ornate mother of pearl inlay beneath the leather grip, and of course those pesky script letters, “Georgi”.

Poor Georgi was a sap, they won it off of him after an endless night at Smokers playing sixty-one. It’s most redeeming quality is lost on him. At 20.5 ounces it’s too heavy for Yuri’s liking, but Otabek likes the extra weight. It’s like they were destined to meet Georgi that night. He had a cue that would fit both of them.

Otabek bends at the waist and makes a clean break of the balls. The cue ball bounces through the racked balls and hits the rails once, twice, a third time cleanly scattering the balls and setting them up for the rest of the night.  The one and the five on the back rail, and the cue on the opposite rail right where it needed to be.

Now it’s Yuri’s turn to play the novice boyfriend.

Yuri takes a long quaff of his drink and sits on it the partition which separates the pool tables from the dart tables. He puts a paper coaster over the top, and the little black cocktail straws stick out from the top. He marches over to the rail next to Otabek, and leans in at an awkward angle that’s sure to fucking destroy his clean break.

“Yuri,” Otabek’s finally warming up to the part in earnest.  “Stand behind the shot. Your left foot.” He taps his left foot in line with the eight ball that Yuri already knows he needs to hit to sink the one ball. “Left of the cue. Always.”

Yuri does as he’s told and melts into position. “Like this?” He calls over his shoulder with pouty lips that he knows makes Otabek half hard without even trying.

“Right foot in line with the shot.”

Yuri complies. “Am I doing it right? You need to show me.”  He makes sure to say it in a way that he clings to the “o” and the “e” sound in the words “show me.” Yuri bends at the waist and wriggles and shimmies just so.  He plays the role well, because he loves to get under Otabek’s skin and set every nerve ablaze in a strange mixture of yearning and frustration.

  Yuri manages to sink the one in the corner pocket, and this being straight pool, where the balls are knocked in in any order the player sees fit, he then goes after the three. Yuri deliberately misses the shot and sends the cue into the corner pocket. He looks around the bar, and then winks at Otabek. It’s a silent, “your welcome for the scratch.”

He keeps his gaze steady on Otabek. Makes sure to peel back the thick leather with his stare. He leaves a promise of what’s to come later in the way that he looks at Otabek in between shots with wide wanting eyes.

Otabek gives as good as he gets, making sure to shred his cheap polyester blouse with the intensity of his gaze. He doesn’t miss a beat though.

Otabek takes the cue back to the middle and begins to shoot a game in proper. He sinks the four, the five, the nine, and the fourteen in rapid succession, just like Nikoli Plisetsky taught the both of them in the back room of a “family” tavern before he knew his times tables.  With a few rapid motions of the arm he’s cleared the table.

“Rerack?” Yuri asks the question, but the other man is already going for it and reracking the balls. In a motion that’s too collected and too fluid for a “novice” he assembles them into the rack and floats them across the green.

Otabek clears the table again, and easily runs 70 or so balls until Yuri drains his whiskey soda and goes to the bar to get another one. Yuri can’t _see_ who they are, but he can _feel_ the long cold stare of a mark on his back. If they keep eye fucking each other over the table, no one’s gonna butt in and throw their money down. 

When he gets back, Otabek’s been approached by the mark.

He’s a man much taller than Otabek, and for that matter himself. He’s got lavender eyes and an almost anxious stare. There’s a woman draped across his shoulder with identical lavender shaded eyes. She looks infinitely more confident than her partner does. Yuri suspects that it might have something to do with with the tight fitting purple dress that matches her eyes and fits her like a glove.

A woman like that has plenty to worry about in a place like this, but getting what she wants isn’t one of them.

Mixed doubles huh? Granted, that was just a name that Yuri gave to the con. He never wanted two marks at once. That’s how things got messy.

“The rest of the tables are full.” The man notes. “But my sister wants to shoot pool.”

Sister huh? Fucking weird. Even for a place twenty miles outside of city center, in a dive where you could count the number of teeth in the average patron’s head on one hand, and you could still probably order crystal Pepsi that they’d been keeping in the back room since ’94.  

“Could be fun,” Otabek says in dry and disinterested tone that indicated that he could _not_ be having less fun.

He’s testing the water. Yuri lets him and snakes a long arm around his boyfriend’s waist.

They settle on eight ball. It’s a beginner’s game that makes Yuri hope they have money.

Otabek breaks. The lavender eyed man sinks the three solid colored balls in rapid succession. His missed shot is calculated in the hustler’s kind of way of making good pool look bad. He’s made it so Yuri can’t sink the twelve, or bounce off the rail and hit the two into the nine on the corner.

Yuri plays his role as a beginner and sinks a single ball, then scratches.

The woman commands the table and runs thirty balls.  

Then it goes back to Otabek. He runs twenty or so, keeping things plausible.

In the end they let the siblings win.

“That was close,” Yuri notes with a smile.

“Beginners luck.” Otabek chides. He’s dusky half lidded look in his eyes that tell Yuri that he’s properly warmed up.

Yuri drains his drink. “Baby, I’m feeling lucky.” It’s something Otabek taught him. Let the mark feel like it’s his idea.

“Once more?” Otabek asks the pair. He signals to the waitress to bring another round of drinks. That’s something they both learned from grandpa. Make them think you were the best of pals. Makes it easier to take their money.  

“My sister likes to play for money.” He says it in a tone that’s rigid and rehearsed.

“I play for money sometimes.” Otabek says simply and cocks his head toward Yuri. “But only straight pool.” The fact of the matter is, Otabek doesn’t mind eight ball. He knows that Yuri’s a man of fucking principle, and he’d rather not play eight ball for money.

Yuri takes a sip of his bourbon for good measure. It’s still too strong, and he still hates bourbon, but he hates it less than Vodka for sure.

“Does he even know the difference between straight pool and sixty-one? You’ll be carrying that weight.” She spent most of the first game talking her brother's ear in a voice that was too low to hear. It’s the first time she’s said anything directly to them. That’s enough for Yuri to decide that the hag talks too much. It’s the first sign that the game is going to be easy money. “$20?” She suggests.

Yuri takes another long draught so he can hide his snort of disgust, and avoid glaring daggers into Otabek. The other man knows damn good and well he won’t pick up a cue stick for less than one hundred…in desperate times a fifty will do.  

“Fifty,” Otabek says as if on cue.

Yuri can feel the soft feather light touches of Otabek’s fingers on his hip. His hand slides up into the space between his shirt and his jacket and sets the exposed skin aflame. It’s a silent plea that says, “please fill in the gaps.” Yuri’s the shit talker, and it poses a particular problem when the mark is supposed to believe he’s the amateur.

“I tease him, that he’s cheap,” Yuri supplies.

A coin toss decides who breaks and, it goes to freaky twins.

 His break is clean, but Otabek’s follow up is better. He runs the table, once, twice, three times, which puts the score somewhere around 42 to nothing before he makes his first error. It’s consistent with the last game where he ran the no more than 20 to thirty balls at once. Yuri’s seen him do two-hundred.

Making good pool look bad is an art. One that Otabek’s mastered, and Yuri never bothered to fuck with.

The woman, unlike her brother was long and liquid. She flowed across the table and willed balls into pockets without even having them touch the cushion. She called pockets with surprising accuracy and it doesn’t take Yuri long to notice she does it billiards style, paying close attention to the sharp metal diamonds that line the rail.

But here’s the thing about women with a taste for diamonds. They count them, they worry about the size of them, but for a moment they don’t question their value. They never stop to fucking think about how they’re useless little rocks. The inlay diamonds on the rail are not so different. They’re nice if you want to impress somebody, but inherently useless in the face of blind luck and just the right amount of skill.

If Yuri fucked around with side bets, he’d bet a mint that she thinks she’s something else right now for picking up a game of straight pool when everyone else fucks around with 8 ball.

Otabek’s rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. The man, whom she titters about and calls “Micky,” is starting to look like a man who expected this to move faster, like he has somewhere to be even if he just broke for the first game twenty minutes ago.

Their glances catch one another, and in that instance, Yuri knows exactly what kind of night it’s going to be.

The woman, “Sara,” runs the table once.

Rack. Break.

She sinks the seven, the nine, the twelve, and the thirteen in rapid succession. Then in a voice that’s satin soft on the edges, and deadly in the middle she calls a shot as is customary in straight pool, “eight to the corner pocket.”

She doesn’t scratch, but it’s almost as good. She misses the eight, but sets him up for what he has to consider his favorite shot. Emerald, on emerald, on emerald. He can bank the cue off the rail and bump the ten and sink the six into the corner pocket, then he can go for the fourteen all the way across the green.

Yuri knows exactly what kind of night it’s going to be and because of that, he doesn’t give a fuck anymore. He’s breaking script. He plucks the McDermott out of Otabek’s grasp, and chalks it with great care. He rubs a bit of the dusty blue substance on the first knuckle of his index finger for no reason other than a baseless superstition that he picked up from his grandfather.

“Anything I want Babe?” Yuri asks Otabek in a syrup thick voice like he doesn’t know shit about straight pool. Yuri makes the initial shot and with the ten, moves onto the six, then clears the three, the seven, the thirteen and the two. He barely has time to call shots.

 “Beginners luck,” he giggles with a saccharine sweet laugh that rolls off the tongue but feels like bile rising up his throat.

Then, without warning he breaks flow and scratches. “Beginner’s” luck only gets you so far. It’s clear that they’re new to hustling pool. The way that they don’t try to hide the way they correct his “bad” shots, and how they clearly “let”Otabek pocket the $100 on the table after Yuri scratches no less than three times. The game is long, to the point of being arduous, but he wants every last twenty between them.

They go back and forth for three solid games, and then Otabek stops fucking around. Runs the table, at least ninety balls at a time.

Yuri doesn’t interfere, he doesn’t need to.

Somewhere, in-between racking and re-racking, and buying the siblings a drink for good measure, the tense but acceptable atmosphere between them changes. Yuri doesn’t know how it happens, but it all ends with $1200 on the table, and most of it comes from the siblings.

“We’re getting hustled,” Sara spits.

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing.” Otabek fires back. He gestures to the seven ball that any player not trying to run a con would’ve sunk alongside the four. Instead she’s got the cue wedged between the rail and the side pocket in a way that’s nigh impossible to straighten out without scratching.

But Otabek does.

Otabek’s all but stopped looking at the green, and in that moment it’s like they’re on the same page. Otabek knows what Yuri knows, and the twins know too. Otabek  stares intently at the money, mostly in twenties that’s piled neatly on the rail. Then it shifts to Micky, whose unbuttoned his shirt collar and started to sweat.

Micky and Sara are down to the last of their money.

Rerack, break. The clack of the balls would be hypnotic, if it weren’t for the thickness of the air around them, and he’s not talking about cigarette smoke.

Yuri traces the invisible string that connects him to Otabek. He holds his gaze steady and firm, and silently, in a way that only they can communicate, gives Otabek all the permission he’ll ever need. They smell blood in the water, and if they lose a few games in good nature, they’re not going to give them the chance to win back their money.

In no time, Otabek’s down to three balls on the table: the fifteen, the three, the four. He sinks the fifteen with an easy bounce off the corner cushion.

That’s when shit finally goes sour. 

From the corner of his eye he can see Micky go for the rail even though Otabek's not done running the table. It becomes clear in the split second look Yuri gets of his screwed up face, and clenched jaw that he’s gonna take the money and run.

So Yuri beats him to it. Yuri socks mickey in the gut real quick.

Sara lets out a shriek like he shot the guy and didn’t just rough the guy up a bit.

Otabek grabs the money, and they both run. By some miracle, the Buick starts up on the first try.

* * *

 

Village Panty was a staple in the community. It was a convenience store down on the corner of Tenth and Franklin. The sign that once read “Village Pantry” had long been spray painted over by bored kids with nothing to do other than shoplift and vandalize. So it now read “Village Panty.” Loud and proud. If you needed loose cigarettes, fortified wine, rolling papers, or little cigars, that was your place. If you needed hard bread, moldy tomatoes, and overpriced onions, but the only thing you could pay with was EBT, that was your place.

Yuri drifts back and forth through the aisles. He shoves a package of cookies up his jacket sleeve along with some beef jerky and a pack of gum. Then, he goes back to the walk in cooler where the lights flicker low and it always makes him think that the store manager…Not the guy with a bad jerry curl and polyester shirt that sits and plays with his phone at the register. The manager, the guy who always has his foot in a boot style cast and a black frayed cigar in his mouth…Is going to sneak up on him and bash his skull in.

Which was stupid because you could hear the guy from a mile away.

Yuri grabs what he really came in for. Then, he scuttles across the scuffed and dirty floor tiles, past the baited rat traps that openly sit out on the counter by the soda fountain,  and goes to the register.

The fucking cashier overcharges him for the booze, but he doesn’t ask for an ID when he hauls up the six pack. Doesn’t lift him up the collar of his shirt and threaten to “bash his fucking skull in,” either which means that he didn’t get caught jamming snacks down his jacket this time. That’s nice.

If you needed a place to get shitfaced on pink champale, Village Panty parking lot was definitely the place.  Yuri leans halfway out of the Buick’s rolled down window and tosses a can into the side of the city’s last payphone. The can hitting the metal makes a dull clunking noise and bounces to the ground with a tinker.

 “Otabek, let’s go to Chris’.” Yuri says as he reaches for another cotton candy colored can of champale. His mom used to drink it and he’d always remind her that it was disgusting and would make her fat. It seems suiting that he’s drinking it in her shitty 1970-god knows what car in a shitty part of town.

He wishes he had a cigarette. A Misty 120, just like she’d smoke.

Chris’ was the best pool hall in the city. $25 an hour, and very few questions about any other money that exchanged hands.

Otabek wrangles one of the drinks from the plastic rings. He pops open the tab and raises it to his lips quickly to drink up the foam that’s spilling out over the top ridge of the can.

Yuri takes a moment to look at him. Really look at him. It’s Friday, so he doesn’t have afternoon or night classes. Otabek probably went home and took a nap after the morning shift. He doesn’t have those dull gray under eye rings that they both wear more often than not these days. His undercut is getting long. Soon, Yuri will have him sit at the old metal chair in the kitchen, the one with little metal steps that fold out from under it. The one that grandpa used to cut his hair on. He’ll cut Otabek’s hair all the same.

Yuri decides that Otabek looks good, and not in the way that he always looks good. He looks good in that fresh faced, “I dare you,” kind of way that made him fall in love with him in the first place.

Something about it grabs his gut and doesn’t let go. Makes him feel regret that they’re out hustling. Makes him feel like they should be doing normal couple-y shit like…Yuri’s mind keeps flashing to all the nights they drove down to the Marina on the bike and sucked on each other’s faces until the sun came up. That’s not right….but they’ve been doing nothing but working for so long, they haven’t really had time to figure out what couples in their twenties are supposed to do.

But like always, Otabek puts his fears to rest. “Slow it down then.” Otabek looks at the drink in Yuri’s hand. His partner should know by now that he shoots pool better when he’s three sheets to shitfaced.

It’s as good as a “yes,” from Otabek.

“I’m fine. I’m good.” Yuri opens the door to the Buick and pours out the rest of the can. “I didn’t come out here to nab a couple hundred off some amateurs.”

Otabek tosses his own can of champale out, and pulls out of the parking lot. He takes Tenth street toward the highway. He grabs Yuri’s hand and rubs his palm with long slow circles. Yuri unbuckles and slides for miles across the long bench row seat until his thigh is butted up against Otabek’s.

Seemingly pleased by this, Otabek switches his hand around, so he’s rubbing on the inside of Yuri’s thigh.

“You never want to go downtown.”

Otabek doesn’t respond.

“You were white as a sheet before we went into Bennington’s, and you’re always pissy when I get into a fight.” Having another drink, willingly going down town, rubbing his thigh, it’s almost playful. “What gives?”

“Is it cause I let you win some money?” Yuri whispers into his ear. Yuri can smell the medicinal scent of his hair product, his aftershave, and rosemary. He can feel the muscles of Otabek’s face shift slightly. Otabek is smiling. “Is it cause I’m gonna win us even more money?”

“Something like that.”   

It takes almost thirty minutes to get through city traffic. Otabek parks on the street, in between an early model Mercedes and an older Cadillac with a nose that goes for miles and a grill that’s 100% chrome. Yuri looks the car up and down and gives a low whistle. “Old money tonight.” It’s immediate that these cars are owned by middle aged and aging men who’ve been playing pool long before he was born. They have money, but don’t flaunt it. They keep their old cars immaculate; just like they keep the big broad rings on their fingers.

 Yuri waits to get out of the car until Otabek’s opened the door and extended his hand. The other man closes the door behind him. In an instant, Otabek’s got him pressed into the passenger side of the car, and leaning into him all hot and heavy.  Purposefully, in only the way that Otabek can be purposeful. In only the way that Otabek can do something for the sole purpose of getting under his skin, Otabek kisses him.

Not on the mouth, where he’d slathered the offending lip gloss. Otabek parts his jacket. Kisses his neck, his collarbones, the lobes of his ear, his jaw.

“You’re a real piece of work Altin,” he breathes into the other man’s ear. Then, he pulls Otabek close and kisses him square on the mouth. Fuck the lip gloss. Yuri can feel the chill of the night through his jacket. It’s sharp and cuts through the many fabrics, is amplified by the cool metal of the car he’s pressed up against.

“It’s not a good luck charm.” Otabek retracts an arm from around Yuri’s waist and plays with the long ends of his hair. Again there’s a lilt to his eyes and a certain knowing in his face that Yuri rarely gets to see. “It’s not about luck…” His voice trails off.

“It’ sure as shit isn’t,” Yuri agrees.

“I think if you can find a game for $500 right away you should do it.” Otabek says it in a voice that’s too serious, and too sincere. It makes his heart thump in his chest and in his ears all at once. There’s little need at Chris’ to put on a legitimate hustle. Pool players came here to play pool. Otabek always has him start up small and build up capital through the night. “Think of it as my valentine to you.”

Yuri takes him by the hand and drags him inside. This is either gonna be the best night of their lives or the worst.

 


	3. All That Money Wants

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like this fic and the aesthetic, I strongly urge you to listen to The Psychedelic Pink Furs first album. The chapter names all refer to singles by that group. ALSO for the love of god, the wonderful Kinogloworm made an AMAZING playlist that captures the feel of this fic really well. There are a lot of mashing of genres here that I really dig. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPmr9grZCqqb1AQ-QnmTvQYQjEUuOJVlA
> 
> Drop me a line @boxwineconfession (no "s" because whoops) on tumblr.

Recreation at Chris’ was a completely different world than Bennington’s. It was on the third floor of a commercial building in the city underneath a Starbucks on the first floor and some nondescript office buildings on the second floor. It was the kind of place you didn’t wander into out of boredom or curiosity. If you were in that crowd, you didn’t belong. There are no signs denoting its name, just an old fashioned neon sign in the shape of a pool rack.

Otabek leads Yuri by the elbow up the steps

“If I’d known we were ending up at Chris’ I would’ve worn my dress out tonight.” The owner Christophe Giacometti is known for his eccentric nature. It’s tolerated largely because he owns one of the last great pool halls in the city, which is a thing that’s as rare as the precious stones that are so often pinned to the owner’s soft colored sport coats. It helps that he’s one of the most famous high rollers the game has ever seen. Eight or ten years ago, hustlers came from all around to try to catch a game with him. Now, hustlers come from all around to play at his hall.

 “The blue one with the lace sleeves. The one that you hate.” Yuri goes on. He says it with exhale through his nose, like it’s supposed to be inflammatory, which is laughable.

He hates that _particular_ garment because it’s got an empire waistline that bunches up at the bust. Why bother when there are a thousand other cuts and styles that showcase his slim waistline and luxurious hips? For example, “the dark green velvet one would be better.” It spills out of his mouth before he can stop himself.

But what did Otabek know? Yuri still fussed at him for wearing socks that didn’t match his slacks anytime they had to go somewhere and look nice.

Yuri laughs dryly in approval. “It would look nice against the green huh?”

At the top of the stairwell, before coat check, Otabek gives Yuri a few hundred in crumpled bills.  “Yeah.” Otabek holds the door wide open for Yuri.  “Check my coat will you?” but Otabek doesn’t wait for a response. Just shucks the garment off.

Yuri takes it, but screws up his face in response. “Where the fuck are you going?” Yuri’s not stupid. It’s rare that he hands over such a large amount of cash so willingly. Especially after Yuri’s had a few drinks. “You’re about to do something I’m not going to like.” It’s a statement, not a question. Yuri’s words burn like venom, but it’s not like Otabek can easily explain his intent.

Otabek purses his lips. He considers for a moment what it is that he should say. Despite the fact that Yuri has said numerous times that the only think keeping him from winning them more money, is having more money, Otabek remains unsure. Yuri’s spoken ill of players with high rolling backers. He says that, “all the fight in ‘ems been fucking bought out,” and usually he spits for good measure.

Yuri locks onto his gaze. He doesn’t look drunk, or flushed, or angry, or even excited. He looks focused. Ready to win. “Don’t do anything I can’t get us out of,” like he knows without really knowing. He turns on his heel and calls over his shoulder. “Whiskey soda?”

“Yeah.”

At that, Otabek turns in the opposite direction and raps on the door that says “management,” in long, flounced gold script. As his knuckles knock against the hard wood of the door blackened by cigarette smoke and ash, it’s hard to remain in the present. Not with so much on his mind.

* * *

 

Otabek remembers that it happened right before Yuri’s birthday a number of years ago.  They’d all but taken over his mother’s room, because that’s where the VCR was, and who knew when she was coming back, if ever. In the end she did a few months later. She stayed a whole six months that time. For the time being, her absence meant fresh sheets on the water bed, and hiding underneath Yuri’s fuchsia colored crochet afghan until they started sweating. It meant sleeping over for days at a time, even school nights until his parents told him he had to come home.

Yuri would come with him whenever that happened, clean clothes swung over his back in his bookbag.

They both had toothbrushes at each other’s houses.

The first time it happened, Otabek stared at anything his eyes could grasp, the amber colored glass decanters which rested on top of the black and dresser. There was also a clock on the dresser. The numbers on its face were made of multiple sets of bright red dice showing the numbers one through twelve.  The velvet painting of a panther was particularly fascinating today. The cat hung off of a tree and roared at the viewer.

It was a bad painting.

Otabek stared everywhere. Except for at the movie, and Yuri.

Yuri’s hand hovered over the drawstring on his sweatpants. Yuri’s palm ground down on him until he was hard and straining.

“Otabek can I?” Was the only thing Yuri asked.

“I want to do it to you too.” Was the only thing Otabek said in response.

Yuri was wearing teal colored leggings that clung to him like a second skin alongside floppy white tube socks that were bunched up around his ankles. Yuri shed them somewhere underneath the covers. Otabek loosened the drawstring of his pants, and pulled his cock over the waistband, but kept everything on. His eyes finally fixated on the fan on the ceiling. It didn’t oscillate, but it was constant. Forced him to think about the feeling of Yuri’s hand on him, and his hand on Yuri. Distracted him from the low sound of the television and the hot stick feeling of being trapped underneath the blanket. The low roll of the water bed back and forth and back and forth as they moved their hands threatened to make him seasick.

It was over in a matter of minutes. Nothing but hot breath and the slip of skin over skin. They didn’t even kiss until later that afternoon while they were watching a grainy bootleg copy of _Bloodsport_.

“Can you be my boyfriend?” Otabek asked in between sloppy open mouthed kisses. He remembers feeling Yuri against him while he asked, hard once more.

Yuri laughed. It was acidic and sharp. “Whatever the fuck you want Altin.” But Otabek didn’t miss the way his lips curled into a smile. “I like, love you, or whatever.”

Ever since that day, Otabek had considered the various ways he could repay Yuri for his love and his affection. He knows that these things are not easily given, and he wants Yuri to know that each day that’s elapsed since then he’s been grateful.

* * *

 

Several years later, Otabek found an answer. Although it was _him_ finding answers so the answer was not simple, elegant, or in any way complete.

The pool hall in the afternoon was a different animal completely. Most dive bars wouldn’t even have a decent pool player inside at this time of day. _Recreation at Chris’_ was different. The light shown in from the large windows that lined the exterior wall. The backlights on the chandeliers which hung from the ceiling were unlit.  It smelled of smoke _and_ disinfectant from that morning’s cleaning. Only a few people played, and those that took the time during waking hours to rack and rerack were either small time hustlers or big time players.

There were no in-betweens. No amateurs, and no rich boys looking for a rite of passage. 

Otabek considered him among the small time players. He had but a few hundred dollars in his pocket from getting paid at the shop, and a few scant hours before Yuri got off work and wondered where the fuck he was.

He really had no business being there at all, but Chris’ wasn’t all that far from campus, and wasn’t he allowed to shoot a few games of pool without his boyfriend’s permission. Yuri wasn’t the only one that could pull a good hustle.

Otabek played a few solitary games of sixty-one before he was approached by a man with shaggy brown hair, thick eyebrows, and a smile that seemed limitless. He wore a cross of gold on his neck. He said he shot straight pool, and would he be interested?

At the time, Otabek’s palms were itchy. So itchy that he couldn’t avoid scratching them in-between chalking and rechalking his hands. His mother always said that an itchy palm meant money was coming your way.

Otabek was interested.

“My name is Leo. Leo de la Iglesia.”  Leo ordered them old fashions made with far too much simple syrup.

“Otabek,” he replied simply.

Leo shot straight pool in a way that looked amateurish to the untrained eye. Otabek knew there were no amateurs in pool halls at 2:00 pm.

Otabek won a few games, and ordered them a second round.

Otabek reserves the opinion that he did not get hustled that afternoon. If Iglesia was making good pool look bad, he was better. It’s just that, at some point, he started losing. Kept losing, and lost fair and square. Maybe that’s what he told himself to justify the loss of $200. They weren’t desperate for money at the time. Wouldn’t have come alone if they were. Still, the loss stung in ways that went beyond quantifiability. He could work extra hours to make up the money, he couldn’t easily come to terms with the fact that Yuri, this punk off the street, were infinitely more talented than him.

Otabek drained his old fashioned and turned to go.

He found himself grounded in place by a firm hand on his hip. “I’ve seen your beautiful face up on the wall at Smokers.” A  masculine voice smooth as velvet brushes against his ear. He’s so close that Otabek can’t break free of his grasp and get a good look at him, but by feel alone he knows he’s bigger and stronger. It keeps him from pushing away and starting to swing immediately.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Otabek tenses.

“Of course you do. You run around with the little blonde who would be the best pool player in town if you could just keep money on the table.” The hand slides up his side. “Or keep him from fighting.” He keeps talking, “Or you could keep your hands off of him.”  

“I lost. I’m getting out of here.”

“You were in here on Christmas eve. I saw you play.”

They were. Only because they weren’t yet too old to get Christmas money if their parents had it. Yuri got absolutely wasted on gin and tonic. Otabek had one too many whiskey sodas. Yuri wore pink lace panties underneath his jeans that could be seen when he bent over the rail and aimed for the cue.

The good news was they didn’t run out on their mark that night. Nor did they rough him up when things went sour. In fact, they’d up by $300 that night.

But Otabek _couldn’t_ shake the offending image from his mind that night. The way the panties rode up against the crest of Yuri’s hips. The way Yuri clung to him when it was the other man’s turn to shoot. Otabek pulled him into the bathroom the first chance he got in between games. Hauled him up on the sink counter and blew him. It didn’t matter how dirty it was, or that they were up, or that their mark quickly lost interest and left while they were gone. 

“If you brought him back,” The man releases his hip and pulls back so they can really look at each other. He’s got dirty blonde hair on top and a dark brown undercut. His suit has the fit and the stitch of someone who thinks that they’re very important. “And acted like a real manager. Kept your hands off of each other long enough for a proper game, I’d make sure you had enough money to play with.”

Otabek has been around long enough to know that the big names in pool had backers. Backers were what bridged the gap between small time and big time pool hustlers. “I’m not his manager,” he says hotly. Still the question remained, especially since they were banned from most places in town, “Why?”

There was a large broach pinned to his lapel. Otabek assumed they were actual diamonds, and not the glass rhinestones that Yuri wore. They were set in a soft white gold, and arranged in the shape of the letter “C”.

Which made things abundantly clear.

He was speaking with Christophe Giacometti. The owner.

“I haven’t seen a game that promising in a long time.”

At the time they didn’t talk collateral, nor did they talk percentages. All Chris did, was say the words in a way that he knew would make Otabek’s skin itch with curiosity. He said them in a way that made his throat dry with something that he would classify as greed if it were an emotion felt by any other man.

But he legitimately wants Yuri to have the best game of his life. Yuri’s pride won’t let him obtain it on his own.

He’s escorted into the office by not one, but two bouncers.

“Otabek Altin,” Chris turns in his high back office chair. It’s made of red brocade and looks out of place when it’s half hidden by the mounds of crumpled papers on his desk. His voice is thick like simple syrup in the bottom of a high ball glass. “You brought your Venus in Furs with you?”

A half smirk creeps into the side of Otabek’s face. He and Yuri get called a lot of things. He’s never heard that one before.

 “What it is it that you want from me?” Chris leans forward on his desk and laces his fingers together. He’s wearing a shirt with a deep v-neck. His abundant chest hair is exposed. Of course he already knows why Otabek is here.

“A backer.”

Chris’ hand disappears under the desk and he can hear the mechanical whorl of a money counting machine. “Of course. The terms you’ll find are quite simple.” His hand resurfaces with a fat stack of bills. “I want to see the best game of pool in my life tonight. Do you know how many games of pool I’ve seen?”

Otabek stares at the knotted pine floor. It shines like it’s been treated recently.

“We have a very promising high roller in from Montreal tonight. You know the type a rich boy who read Walter Tevis. Just so happens to be a legitimately talented player.” His eyes light up like he finds his reference particularly clever. “He’s got my Leo down by two grand tonight alone.”

Otabek’s mouth pulls into a legitimate smirk now, a full even mixture of amused and pissed off. So, the process of getting him in here was a hustle in and of itself. “One more thing, I don’t care if you’re about to win. Don’t even think about pulling the same kind of stunt here that you did at Bennington’s earlier tonight.”

Damn. Word travels fast.

Chris gets up from the desk and circles round. Otabek expects the man to get up into his space again. He’s wrong. Chris stays an appropriate distance away. Otabek watches his arm clad in lilac creep towards him. His fingers are long and bony. Chris still touches him. Lightly on the arm, like they’re old friends and Otabek needs comforting. “Fifty percent is what you’ll get. His smile is big, white, genuine, and strangely nonthreatening.

“Otabek, one more thing darling.”

“Hm?”

“Make sure he doesn’t lose.”

Chris’ smile and overly sweet words make Otabek’s palms sweat in a way that their polaroids on the wall at Smokers’, or seeing Yuri rough up a guy does not. It doesn’t stop him from reaching for the stack of bills.

* * *

 

Usually when Otabek enters the main room at Chris’ he takes a moment to admire the large chandelier in the center of the ceiling. It’s made of thousands if finely faceted crystals, and it catches the light of the vintage neon signs in such a way that it sparkles the way diamonds do in commercials.

The aesthetic shouldn’t work. Neon meets antique crystal should be tacky, but somehow Chris pulls it off.

Tonight he can’t. When he rounds the corner and walks into the hall proper, what he sees makes his blood run cold, but not in the way that he’d expect.

There’s a man, tall with broad shoulders and an undercut much like his own. “What do you say princess?” He’s standing too close to Yuri with his arm resting against the wall and his stance wide. He’s pinning Yuri to the wall and leaning into his space like he wants to steal a kiss.

His accent is thick.

“How bout I fucking show you-“

He can see Yuri’s fingers curl into a tight fist, and he’s seen what those fists can do. If Yuri roughs him up now they get to keep _none_ of the bankroll that weighs Otabek down and make him walk like he’s got a big fucking secret. He’s got to diffuse this. Fast.

“You should show him Yuri,” Otabek’s voice is calm despite the fact that he physically wedges himself between Yuri and Otabek with the flash of his open palm. “With a game of course.”

The Canadian’s eyes are blue like the neon signs that dot the walls. They shine even brighter at his words.

Yuri breaks away from the stranger and quickly steps into Otabek’s space. A reassuring hand flutters to Yuri’s hip.

“Really?” The Canadian man’s ecstatic voice matches his expression. “From California to New York I’ve gone from pool hall to pool hall.” Otabek watches his expression grow into something that somehow goes beyond ecstatic. Euphoric?  Blissful? “They say, JJ you’re the king of the table. Pool, billiards, snooker, there’s no one here that can beat you, but there’s a fairy boy in a fly over state.” Joy? No, it’s something else. Some other emotion.  “Maybe this fairy can beat you King JJ.”

No, it’s something that transcends JJ’s elation and Yuri’s budding fury. Unwarranted. There’s a sense of unwarranted self-importance about him. In that moment, he understands why Yuri shakes underneath his touch in anger. 

“I won’t touch the cue for less than $500,” Yuri drags the words low through the sharp edges of his teeth. Otabek wonders if Yuri’s trying to scare the other man off. He doesn’t know that he’s a high roller, and it’s damn near impossible to hustle here. Everyone’s too good.

* * *

 

Otabek’s up to no fucking good and Yuri knows it. It makes his hands shake when he goes to the bar and gets two whiskey sodas. And a water cause as bad as he wants a fucking drink tonight he’s got to slow it down. People who get drunk during a game always have an excuse for losing. He doesn’t want to lose, and he sure as shit doesn’t want an excuse.

He makes his way to the tables, and suddenly a man is in his space.

“Long hair.” The man circles around. “Clearly homosexual,” his voice isn’t filled with venom and hate like it normally is when Yuri receives these comments. He sounds almost happy. The stranger lifts the strand of yellowed fake pearls away from his chest, and it takes every ounce of energy Yuri has to not throw one of the drinks at the stranger’s face. He doesn’t because he knows that if they get kicked out while they’re still short, it’ll be hard to get another game anytime soon. Twice in one night is a little bit fucking much. Even for them. “You’re who I’ve been looking for!” The man exclaims with a thick accent and points at Yuri.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”

“JJ don’t waste your time,” A woman appears through the clouds of smoke beside him. She’s dressed in a gown, much like the woman…Sara, from earlier in the night was. It’s black, sleeveless, probably cost more than he and Otabek bring home in a month. The big difference between her and the hag from Bennington’s, is that here she doesn’t look grossly out of place. Her expensive dress matches the fifteen thousand dollar pool table they’re drifting toward, and the twenty dollar high ball in her hand.

“It’s fine!” The other man insists. He keeps talking but Yuri just zones out and sips some of the whiskey off the top of one of the whiskey sodas. He never realized that anyone could make the undercut looks so douchey. Because like, Otabek looked so fucking good in it. Why did this French fucker have to go ruin it? “He obviously hasn’t heard of my 3rd place win in the U.S. Open, a $25,000 purse.”

Fucking stupid. Professional? Talking about purse size in a tournament? Was he _trying_ to not get a game in all night?

“What do you say princess?” He closes back in on Yuri and begins playing with his pearls again. Who needs to throw a punch when this guy’s got _thousands_ to blow and he’s got a $300 McDermott he won off another “pro”? “How bout I fucking show you-“

“You should show him Yuri,” Otabek’s voice is calm despite the fact that he physically wedges himself between Yuri and Otabek with the flash of his open palm. “With a game of course.”

Between them, a thousand is thrown down on the rail. Otabek clenches and unclenches his jaw like he wants to say something to Yuri. A coin is tossed, and the asshole Leroy gets to break for Yuri. They don’t have time to talk. Whatever the fuck Otabek was doing it’s going to have to wait. The break is clean, and almost clinical. Three balls hit the rail and there’s very little out of place. Like he doesn’t feel threatened. He should. Yuri will show him.

“Ladies first,” JJ bends at the waist, but not before Yuri can catch the smug slip of a smirk on his face.

Yuri runs ninety balls on the first go just to show him.

“JJ is nonplussed,” the other player exclaims. It makes the hair stand up on the back of Yuri’s neck. So much so that he joins Otabek at his spot against the wall instead of watching his opponent closely. He needs to be near Otabek right now so he can calm the fuck down. Yuri appreciates the silent weight of Otabek’s body so close. Together, they watch every move JJ makes intently, for the sole reason of figuring out what makes the other man tick. Does he bounce off the cushion or sink straight into the pocket? Does he count diamonds, or does he shoot while barely looking at the table like Otabek does?

Otabek watches Yuri watch. Yuri can feel his heavy hot gaze upon him. Yuri tries not to think about how far $1600 or so dollars will go at $500 a game.

That’s Otabek’s job.

Except JJ keeps shooting, and shooting and shooting. The next thing he knows it’s forty minutes later. His drink is gone. JJ’s run a straight game 120.

Yuri watches him pocket their $500 off the rail.

Wordlessly Otabek throws down another.

Yuri doesn’t even get a chance to touch the table.

JJ runs the balls once, twice, three times. He doesn’t shut up the entire time. “Isabella, I’m going to buy you a diamond ring with what I make tonight.”

Four times. Five times.

“I can’t wait JJ!”

“This is how the King does it!” And he does this stupid thing with his hands that makes Yuri want to dry heave.

Six, seven, eight. Yuri feels himself getting nauseous. He can also feel Otabek’s hand slip into his. It’s supposed to be reassuring. Yuri tightens his hand around Otabek’s like he takes comfort in it. It’s hard not to shake, not to dig his nails in, not to get pissy because he knows when he’s being patronized.

“Let’s have a drink after this. My treat, since I’ll have all the money.” His smile is big and genuine. He runs the balls eleven times in total, winning the game before Yuri can even shoot once.

“I need a fucking smoke.” He breaks contact from Otabek and charges toward the door.  He could very easily light up in here, but he needs to get the fuck away.  “Don’t fucking go anywhere fuckface.” He spits through his teeth.

Yuri tries to cram a few bills into the cigarette machine by the door, but the machine rejects the bill. He snatches it up, and charges outside.

* * *

 

“We will return,” Otabek says to Yuri’s opponent.

Wordlessly, he crams a ten into the cigarette machine and selects a pack.

* * *

 

“You’re never one to worry about money.” Otabek says as he offers him a thin white cigarette and extracts a lighter from his pocket. It’s a barbed fucking question. Yuri and Otabek have two fights. That isn’t to say they’ve _only_ had two fights in total over the course of their relationship. All of their fights have one of _two_ themes. The most prominent of course is over money. Otabek’s right. Even when they hustle to make ends meet, he’s never this shaken.

Losing is essential for a good hustle. It’s bound to happen when you get anyone of skill. However, he’s also never depleted their funds so quickly.

Before he can respond, Otabek places the cigarette that he’d put in Yuri’s fingers between his lips. He strikes the lighter so that all Yuri has to do is take a long drag. Almost immediately the shaking in his hands and his shoulders, his hips and his knocking knees is reduced. Not eliminated. Reduced.

“I got you a backer.”

It had been raining off and on all day, but now it’s shifted into snow. The temperature has dropped dramatically in the past few hours since they snuck out of the house with the McDermott and the Buick. The snow falls in big fluffy white flakes onto Otabek’s jacket and melts on contact. It hits the thin paper of his cigarette and dampens it. He takes another drag and watches the red hot cherry drag downward ever slowly towards his fingers and the filter.

No matter how badly his body might’ve craved it, it tastes fucking disgusting.

“So I’m getting fucking hustled.” His voice is full of venom, even though he knows that it might be misplaced.

“Yuri.”

“I expect it in a game. Just not from you.”

“Please.” Otabek’s hand clenches around the pack of cigarettes and almost crushes it. The foil sticks out sloppily from the top of the pack .

“You know how I feel about that kind of thing.” He adds, “You didn’t even tell me Otabek.” He had his suspicions, he’s not stupid. But he and Otabek are a team. They _need_ each other, and if any of it’s going to work they _need_ to agree on the rules of the game they’re going to play. It’s why Otabek asked him what kind of hustle he wanted to pull at Bennington’s.

Otabek purses his lips together, worries the bottom one, and knits his brows close together. His eyes cycle through tense, and soft, tense and soft and a thousand individual emotions as he tries to find the words he needs to explain himself. “I had the opportunity to give you the best game of your life Yuri. I took it.”

Yuri cups his nose and mouth between both hands so that his fingers rest flat on either side of the bridge of his nose. The cigarette is still clenched between his fingers and the smoke makes his eyes burn. “I told you not to do anything I couldn’t get us out of.” In his mind it sounded gruff. Commanding. When it came out, it was soft and almost vulnerable.

He really fucking hated the way Otabek could just fucking tear emotions out of him like that.

“I’m sorry.” Yuri can tell by the softness in his tone that he is truly sorry. Here’s the thing though. Yuri knows by now how he and Otabek work together.  As codependent as they may be, they only take what they need from one another. There’s a thin line between _taking_ and _pushing_.

Yuri didn’t _take_ when he took the pool cue and left for two days, came back with six grand. He _pushed_ Otabek. Said to him when he walked back through the door “here’s your fucking tuition money. No fucking excuses.” Because he couldn’t bear the idea of Otabek giving up on a better life just because he was stuck.

Those were small time games. $100, maybe $200 a pop. It’s why it took him so fucking long to come home with the money.

Otabek is pushing him right now. Pushing him hard. Maybe it wasn’t the right way of doing it. Neither was disappearing for days on end to hustle alone.

He doesn’t ask what will happen if he loses. He already knows. “You think I can win.” He tosses the cigarette into the snow that’s already starting to stick on the ground.

“He made 4th at the open _last_ year.” Otabek purses his lips together thoughtfully. “Year before Nikolai watched the open on cable at Sharkys while you were at work. Leroy came in dead last.” Otabek decides finally, “Inconsistent.”

Yuri nods. Accepts Otabek’s outstretched hand. He’s still not over it, but he can put it aside for the time being. He’s never had the chance to play with this much before.

“Hey,” Otabek squeezes his palm. Then, he leans into kiss him and laps at his parted lips lightly with his tongue. “Fix your makeup before we go in.”

Yuri screws up his face in confusion. Otabek never says shit like that.

“Want to look good while you beat him right?”

How the actual fuck is he supposed to stay mad at this fucker?

* * *

 

Its 1:30 in the morning when he and Otabek finally make it back into the club. The LED marquee on one of the buildings across the street told them that much before they ducked back inside.

 “You get twenty balls this game Leroy. That’s it.”

“Princess!” His eyes honest to god light up when they walk back into Chris’ “I was afraid you were gone.” There’s a pained and desperate look in his eyes that says that Yuri is his last hope to make any money. He’s a futile combination of too good, and too loud to get another game after any of this. “Seventy is my lucky number…I got you a whiskey soda. That’s what you had right?”

And it’s so fucking sincere, Yuri knows he’s not trying to get him drunk.

“Yeah sure. Whatever. Let’s shoot some pool. The money Otabek.”

JJ only sinks twelve balls before he misses a shot on the nine to the corner.

“Luck has nothing to do with it Leroy.” Yuri says as he chalks the cue. Never mind the fact that he drags the blue chalk across his knuckle for no reason other than a baseless superstition he picked up from his grandfather. Maybe there’s a difference between superstition and luck. Maybe there’s no difference between superstition and habit.

Yuri approaches the table in quick little steps that probably make him look fucking stupid. He moves in sideways to the rail. His feet are planted sideways. His right hand was on the end of the handle, covering those gold script letters of another man’s name. He plants his left hand on the green for the bridge, and in one swift and fluid motion, takes the shot. He sends the eight ball speeding across the table. Sends the twelve into the nine. Sinks the five, and spreads the balls wide. He has a lot of options now.

As if Yuri hadn’t been shaking in anger and fear moments ago, he runs the balls twice without blinking an eye.

“At last!” But for the love of God does he ever shut up? “JJ gets a good game!”

Yuri makes the three off the eight and goes in for the break. It’s smooth like the microfiber boxers he got Otabek for Christmas a few months ago. Yuri leans into the green, and hopes that Otabek wore them tonight. Yuri wins the game, and from the corner of his eye he watches Otabek pocket half the money that’s on the table.

He doesn’t wait for JJ to put more down before he breaks once more. He doesn’t play here often enough to call Chris’ his home turf, but he’s been here long enough to know the feel of the table. He knows to appreciate the way there’s a loose floorboard on the left of the table, and knows to correct for that if he has to step in and hit from that side. Yuri wins two more games 125 to zero effectively bringing them to being “up” $500 from when they walked in the door.

Yuri finally scratches when he’s thirty points into _another_ game. Slowly, he slinks away from the rail and back to Otabek’s side. “I fucking hate being watched.”

A small crowd has gathered around the table. There’s an impossibly tiny man with soft colored freckles running side bets between the small crowd. Otabek’s staring with laser precision at his friend who wears a cross of gold and rarely opens his eyes.

It shouldn’t be surprising. Yuri stormed out, and caused a scene. Leroy won’t shut the fuck up. Even when he’s losing. They make for the kind of pair that compulsive types and side betters will flock to for a piece of the action. 

Yuri started losing again, but it barely phased him. He turned down Otabek’s offers for more whiskey. Stopped drinking and started to think that maybe Otabek was right. Maybe Leroy was inconsistent.

Something happened that never happens. Yuri’s hunch was right.

Yuri won a game, then another.

Yuri snuck a furtive glance at the clock over the bar. It was 3:15 in the morning. The crowd hadn’t thinned, but most of the bar was empty. Were they gonna get kicked out?

Yuri’s eyes drift over Otabek, there’s a man standing next to him. The stranger has a big stupid grin on his face, and he can see that they’re talking together softly.  He’s got a lilac v-neck shirt on and a pastel pink sport coat jacket draped over the crook of his elbow. His hair is as straw blonde as Yuri’s until it isn’t and fades into brown.

Yuri feels a red hot flash of anger cloud his vision. Suddenly, in an equally quick flash, a few things click together.

“Don’t worry Yuri dear,” the man beams at him. “I won’t turn the lights out on you. I love watching you play.”

The way Christophe Giacometti; and that’s who it has to be, talks sends shivers down his spine. It’s too nice and too natural and screams danger in its sincerity. There’s no way someone backs pool players, owns a pool hall, and is _legitimately_ nice.

Yuri goes in for the break. They must’ve played ten games or more together by now. He can feel a dull ache settle into his arm. His brain feels fuzzy from starting to drink and then stopping. Like he’s almost hungover. Yuri forgets about the loose board and goes into the shot after the break from the wrong angle. He scratches, and things get turned over to JJ.

“Is JJ good at coming from behind?” Chris chirps.

“The King reigns over the table. This is all part of a longer plan of endurance.”

Yuri exhales sharply through his nose. Sure.

“JJ wants to play for a thousand a game Plisetsky.”

“You’re on Frenchie.”

Otabek brings him coffee. It’s bitter, but all it has to do is do it’s job and perk his ass up. “How much are we up by?”

“We’re not doing that right now.” Otabek’s mouth shifts from pinched to a half smile. Yuri always gets cocky when they’re up. Too cocky. “Need something to eat?”

It has been what, twelve hours or so by now? “No, I’m good. This is the last time he gets control of the table.” Yuri takes a long drink of the molten hot sludge that Otabek had the audacity to call coffee and regrets it. It’s too thick in his mouth, and he has to fight the urge to spit it out. “I wanna enjoy the rest of Valentine’s day with you.”

 He steps in to close to Otabek’s space. Otabek toys with the pearls around his neck. “You’re not still upset?”

“Livid really.” Yuri hands Otabek the coffee cup and reaches for the lip gloss in his pocket. “When I win, I’ll be over it.”

“It’s the 15th already Yuri.” Otabek says that like he fucking means it. Like as fucked up as all of this was it wasn’t one big, “I fucking love you.”

JJ runs eighty balls and then misses the eight off the side pocket. “Shut up Otabek.” Yuri reaches for the McDermott and approaches the table. “I’ve got to make good on my promise.”

Yuri _almost_ makes good on his promise. Yuri runs two hundred balls over the course of the next forty-five minutes. His arm feels like it’s about to fall off. Leroy doesn’t have the chance to touch the table again til almost 5:00 AM.

Yuri can tell that he’s getting tired. He holds his left arm in a way that makes it look heavy. He puts too much pressure on his right hand at the butt. He runs a good fifty balls, but the shots and the calls come out slower and slower and slower each time.

Yuri takes the table back. At a certain point, he peels the pearls away from his neck and tosses them to the floor. He pushes the sleeves up on his long sleeve blouse, and tries to ignore the ache in the base of his spine and in his hips. Yuri keeps winning.

At 7:30 AM, Leroy says in a voice that starts off broken and defeated, but ends in the upward tick of confidence, “JJ can’t beat you Princess Yuri.” He smiles, like it’s what he’d been looking for all night. Like he it’s what he wanted all along.

While Chris and Otabek sort out the money, JJ shakes his hand. Yuri still thinks he’s an asshole.

* * *

 

Otabek leads Yuri out of Chris’. He squints at the blinding sight of the sun reflected across crisp white snow. His body is heavy and sore. He’s not drunk and he’s not hungover but that strange liminal place in between. While he waits for Otabek to dig the car out from the snow, it’s hard to believe that he _hasn’t_ died and heaven’s waiting room happens to look like the city at 8 AM on a Sunday morning. There’s no one downtown except for the two of them, and fat pigeons that look like they’d drop like lead balloons if they actually tried to fly.

Otabek takes them to the diner on first avenue. They order coffee, bacon, eggs, and toast. Yuri’s eggs are over done. Otabek asked for wheat toast and got white. It’s still somehow the best fucking food that Yuri’s ever tasted.

They sit crammed together in one side of the booth. Yuri’s long legs are propped up on the other side of the booth. He watches with rapt attention as Otabek counts the money underneath the table.

“Sixty, eighty, Nine hundred,” his voice is barely above a whisper. “Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty.” He flips another twenty off of his thumb. “Ten thousand.”

“No fucking way,” Yuri murmurs between mouthfuls of toast.

Otabek doesn’t say anything in response. He simply presses the wad of bills, far thicker and more cumbersome than anything Yuri’s seen before into his palm. “Way.”

* * *

 


	4. Love My Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well this got super out of control. There will be a short epilogue to tie all of this together jfc.

They re-enter the house through the back door off of the side room. Otabek props the heavy storm door open with his back and waits for Yuri to cross the threshold.  The door creaks loudly upon opening and it’s got a big ugly metal decorative “P” (for Plisetsky, or poor, or pitiful depending on the day you’re describing the family), over the thick glass. Otabek follows him immediately, but the door flies shut with a deafening _slam behind_ him before he can guide it closed quietly.

“Nice work Altin,” Yuri hisses out the corner of his mouth. Cautiously they step through the mud room, which is littered with discarded boots, coveralls, and all sorts of things that Nikolai meant to fix or refurbish but never got around to. An old women’s vanity that he’d been refinishing for Yuri for at least three years now, an antique Vienna brass lamp that he’d been trying to convert from gas to electric in his spare time, which was of course spread out on the vanity’s unfinished surface.

Before he can berate Otabek further, he realizes they’re fucked anyway. Grandpa’s sitting at the table with his morning coffee and the paper. His foot, the one that gives him trouble is propped up in another adjacent chair.

Yuri turns to Otabek for an explanation. He’s good at them.

Otabek does nothing other than wear the pained and exasperated face that he always makes when he’s dealt with a lot of bullshit in rapid succession and _this_ was the thing that finally did him in. He’s done for the night (day?). Yuri’s gonna have to handle this one.

“Mornin’ gramps.”

The old man doesn’t say anything right away. He simply folds his paper down, smooths it across the red and green cloth placemats they’d gotten out at Christmas time and still hadn’t bothered to put away yet. “Yuri, Otabek, would you like coffee?” He turns to look at them. His eyes are heavy with judgement, but the sting of accusation is wholly absent.

That alone leaves Yuri feeling like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“No thank you.” Otabek’s hand is firm on his shoulder. As if to say, _I suppose I can handle this._ “We got up early and went to Rosie’s,” Otabek supplies from behind him.

It wasn’t exactly a lie, nor did Grandpa question why they went to Rosie’s without him. That in and of itself was strange too, because Grandpa loved sitting at Rosie’s for hours drinking coffee and talking to every soul over the age of thirty who walked in the door.

“I’m going to the late service.” Nikolai announces. He moves his foot from it’s propped up position on the chair to the floor with an exasperated groan. St. Gregory of Nyssa was the Russian orthodox church in town. The brick building had a blue roof and a ridiculous gold dome on the top. Inside was cold and drafty. Yuri knows it’s an invitation, one he’s turned down for years.

When he was younger the vibrant paintings kept his mind off the cold.

Now? As much as he might need to fucking go to church right now, it’s the last place he wants to be. “Nah, Otabek’s got to study and shit, and I need to do laundry for the week.”

Nikolai nods.

Yuri’s eyes go wide in the way that only happens when you remember something very important. In that moment he stops dissecting the way that Nikolai stares at them. He forgets the way that guilt has crawled into his gut and threatens to stay there. “Are the church ladies still having a halva sale?”

Nikolai nods.

Yuri carefully extracts a few bills from his pocket taking great care to make sure that only tens and twenties are extracted.

The whole time Otabek’s worrying his lip, his eyebrows are knit, like he’s almost going to pass out while Yuri tries to hand Nikolai the money. “Get us a whole bunch. Please?”

“Sure thing.” Nikolai pockets the money and turns toward the side room where his boots are stored. “But Yuri?”

“Hm.”

“Otabek too…” His voice trails off. He opens his mouth and closes it rapidly as if he’s still trying to figure out exactly what it is that he wants to say. “Don’t do anything too stupid with the money.”

* * *

It isn’t until Otabek all but pulls him up the stairs that Yuri realizes how tired he is. The physical state of his body doesn’t really affect him much anymore. “That was so fucking awkward,” Yuri whispers into Otabek’s neck as Otabek guides him up the stairs.

“You have chalk on your forehead,” Otabek says in a soft half laugh. “Not to mention the McDermott.” It hangs heavily from Yuri’s shoulder, and threatens to pull his entire arm off in the process.

“Why didn’t he say anything?”

“We needed it.”

Yuri’s been tired since the first time he woke up and found his mom gone, and that was what, ten fucking years ago?  At this point, Yuri doesn’t even fucking bother with complaining that he’s tired anymore. He does doubles at Nishi’s all the goddamn time, and oh yeah, there’s his side job too. So, he’s no stranger to coming home with his arms and his legs feeling like lead. In addition to the fatigue in his body, there’s the feeling in his brain. Every night, his head feels like it’s bursting with the same kind of fuzzy snow globe static that the CRT television always gets instead of actual channels.  

When his brain feels that way, fuzzy and addled with fatigue…Those are the nights that Otabek wants him to go through flash cards with him, or help him study for an upcoming exam.

If being tired stopped him from doing anything, he’d never get a goddamn thing done outside of work. Fuck, if being tired stopped him, he wouldn’t be able to serve up pad Thai and Lo Mein with a smile. He’s used to tired, the way it seeps past your muscles and into your bones. Feels a little better with coffee, but ultimately leaves you feeling foggy, like you’re constantly walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there at all.

This is a whole new level. His arm feels like it’s going to fall off, and it’s been, what, well over twenty-four hours since he last slept? Despite all of that. Despite it being nine a.m. the next day, the night isn’t over yet. He didn’t expect Leroy to fold so easily. Expected the game to last well into the night, and he’d planned as such. First, he drank so much coffee that despite the stifled yawns and the fatigue in his body, he’s not sleeping any time soon. His heart is racing, and there’s nothing that can be done. He also Mari in-between games and begged her to cover his shift, so he doesn’t need to be anywhere other than here right now.

Otabek’s hands on his body reminds him that there’s only one thing left to cross off the list for the night. The only thing he really needed. More than money, or a hustle, or a nice pair of panties and a little bralette that matched. Yuri wanted to finished what had begun hours ago behind the locked doors at Nishi’s. The strange and awkward, familiar and comforting, foreign and sensual tightrope walk that they do…The one that’s laced with so much trust and interdependence, yet spiked with cautious and almost deceitful omission. The one that’s sterile and business like, yet simultaneously laden with lust and need. He’s been making eyes and tongue fucking Otabek all fucking night and got nothing more than a raspberry colored bruise on his collar bone for his efforts.

Oh yeah, and ten fucking grand.

Never fucking mind that. He fucking needs Otabek. Yuri makes this abundantly clear as he nips at Otabek’s neck and grinds up softly against him.

 “Yuri,” Otabek’s voice cracks. It always, always happens when he tries to be bossy and intimidating. Despite his would be murderous stare, Otabek’s just a big brown teddy bear.

Otabek has other ideas and pushed him into the shower. “Yura,” Otabek’s voice was soft yet, firm at the time. “We smell awful.” Yuri’s probably got a half a drink’s worth of whiskey in his hair. He feels like he rolled around in an ashtray. “There’s chalk everywhere,” Otabek murmurs into his bare chest.  

That too. It’s not just his forehead. Otabek got him stripped down naked, drank in the sight of his naked form, and cocked an eyebrow when his eyes traveled lower.

 “Happy to see me?”

Yuri looks to his own half hard dick with a smirk, “what was your first clue Altin-“ The smirk fades when he realizes he’s got thick blue chalk smeared all over the the skin around his dick and just at the base. The skin there is dry, almost chapped, and makes it look like he’s been wearing it for a great deal of time. Must’ve happened when he went to take a piss or something. Jesus fucking Christ.

The water from the shower rains down on both of them, dampening their hair and making their skin flush. Otabek usually hates showering with Yuri, because Yuri aggressively pushes Otabek out of the spray and hogs all of the warmth. It’s not a problem now. Yuri’s firmly latched onto Otabek’s torso, and he refuses to let go.

Yuri sucks big possessive marks into Otabek’s neck. The kind that will show, even when he’s got his shop cover-alls on and zipped all the way up.

Otabek is trying to actually get him clean. Otabek’s soapy hands roam over his body with a sense of deftness and precision that in no way could be interpreted as sensual or needy. The motions are functional, despite the fact that Yuri can feel Otabek’s budding arousal. Thrusts up against it, and threatens to knock him off balance constantly.

 “Please, you’re not helping.” The smile on Otabek’s face betrays the tinge of annoyance in his voice.

Yuri feels half drunk despite having quit the whiskey hours ago. He’d very much believe that the last twelve hours or so were something out of a drunken fever dream.  In reality he’d wake up hungover, broke and with leg cramps. Any second now, he’s gonna wake up, roll out of bed, and knock over an almost finished bottle of Dark Eyes, or whatever cheap swill they’d had the night before. The stink of the cheap liquor spilling into the carpet will make him queasy.  

He’s definitely not ten grand richer.

And there’s no fucking way he’s got Otabek in the shower with him, washing him off like he’s an invalid and Otabek’s his sexy fucking nurse.

Ugh, the only thing worse than waking up piss drunk from this kick ass dream right now, would be waking up only to find out that he wasn’t here with Otabek right now.

A sharp flutter of anxiety tugs at Yuri’s chest.  Yuri’s gotta make sure.

“Something tells me you don’t really mind.” he mumbles against Otabek’s collar bone…Except that it’s covered in eighty-nine cent body wash, the “fresh linen” kind. The only kind that Otabek will tolerate because it doesn’t smell like flowers. He gets a mouthful of the acrid soap.

Yuri spits on the floor of the shower lightening fast before Otabek can catch him.

“Sexy, Plisetsky.”

“Yeah,” Yuri untangles one arm from around Otabek’s chest, then another. Yuri turns them around so that Otabek is firmly in the spray and rinsed off completely.

The dark circles that were absent earlier in the night have taken residence back underneath Otabek’s eyes. Whenever Yuri gets circles under his eyes, they’re jet black and heavy. With Otabek they come in soft hues of red and purple, like fresh bruises. They look puffy, not heavy. His usual vibrant complexion is absent, and he’s a bit more pale than usual. Yuri’s reminded that he’s not the only one that aches, that feels half drunk on nothing more than sleep deprivation. Despite it all, Otabek still looks beautiful.

Slowly, Yuri peels himself away from Otabek’s warm wet skin. He doesn’t want to, but he _needs_ to. Because he knows the moment they step out of the shower, Otabek’s going to switch back into manager mode. Dry him off with the big fluffy blue towel that hangs on the rack just an arm’s reach away. Going to take him apart with his hands and his mouth and his cock and then help him into one of his satiny nightgowns. Preferably a nicer one that isn’t filled with snags.

Yuri dusts a few kisses across Otabek’s chest, his stomach, and the crests of his thigh. He’d like to linger much longer on all of those areas, but gravity is not on his side. He drops to the green and white tiled floor of the shower much too soon, and far too tired to fight it.

But it’s something he feels compelled to do. Needs to do for Otabek.

Otabek is half hard already when Yuri starts to tease him with his mouth. Yuri laps at the tip, and makes a big show of kissing the shaft and mouthing at either side. For whatever reason, Otabek likes that. A show where Yuri is the star.

The tiles are sticky with soap scum. Feels grimy against his shins. “You need to clean the fucking shower.” Yuri snorts as water drips down his nose and his face. He flashes a grin up at Otabek, and squints his eyes in the spray.

Otabek stares at him for a moment. One brow cocked, and tawny eyes heavy with bemusement. “You need to-“

Yuri cuts him off before he has time to speak and takes the head of Otabek’s cock into his mouth just for a moment. He lets his tongue swipe across the head, and sucks on it softly for a moment.  “What is it?” Yuri relents, but keeps Otabek resting against his lips so he can feel the drag of every syllable that rolls off of his tongue. “What is it that I need to do?” Yuri leans back on his haunches and stares at Otabek with big wide eyes. It’s the kind of look that gets him in trouble.

This morning, trouble manifests itself in the form of Otabek placing a hand on the crown of Yuri’s head. Almost tenderly he threads his fingers into Yuri’s hair at the root. Otabek steps forward, and tugs lightly at Yuri’s damp flaxen strands.

“Ah,” Yuri’s mouth parts in surprise and-

“Suck,” Otabek’s got his other hand wrapped around the base of his dick. He’s pressing it to Yuri’s mouth, and how the fuck can Yuri deny a request like that? How can he keep teasing when Otabek is velvety soft skin wrapped in virile hardness between his lips. “You want it Yuri.”

“Hm,” Yuri agrees around Otabek’s length. Yuri takes as much as he can into his mouth. Otabek’s still got his fist around the base, so he can’t take him in completely yet. Yuri makes sure to worship him with lips, and tongue, and little barely there grazes of the teeth that make Otabek growl low and bite his lip.

Yuri allows Otabek to give himself a few rough pumps before batting his hands away. Yuri relaxes his throat and takes Otabek in completely.

“Yuri,” Otabek exhales sharply. “You were so good tonight Yuri.”

Yuri wants to argue. _No. Don’t you get it fucker? You were the good one. You did all the fucking legwork, and face work, and I just showed up._ But his mouth was full of cock, and so the only way to properly rebuff Otabek’s misplaced comments was to somehow work harder for it. Yuri can feel his throat muscles constrict around Otabek’s length. It’s hard to relax enough when he’s so sore, and the shower spray hits him right in the face, but he _has_ to fucking try.

Yuri chokes, coughs and sputters around Otabek when he can’t keep the brutal pace up consistently.

“Easy…baby, easy,” Otabek keeps his hand firmly rooted in Yuri’s hair, but his other free hand flies to his jaw line. Slowly, tenderly Otabek rubs soft patterns into the side of his cheek. “Go slow. Okay?”

Yuri in fact does _not_ want to go slow. He wants to give back a small fraction of the intensity in which Otabek fucks him relentlessly into the mattress, or the chair, or the carpet, or the pool table down in the basement, if only for a moment.

For a moment, Yuri revels in the feeling of strong hands that hold him so softly. He looks up into Otabek’s eyes and finds nothing but warmth and trust there in response, and in that moment, Yuri knows. Knows just how to lead to his lover’s undoing in a way that’s well within his means.

Yuri takes Otabek into his mouth again. Inch by inch, all the way down. He falls further down on his knees, relaxes his throat completely. His movements are impossibly slow, but he can take all of Otabek in this way when he goes slow. Otabek’s thick curly hair tickles at his nose, and even under the warm stream of the shower, his strong musky scent is still present.

Yuri passes the control back to Otabek at this point. Lets the other man fuck his mouth and his throat, because he knows that Otabek won’t dare go faster than Yuri can handle. In the same way that Otabek responds to his questions, or Otabek walks down the hallway like he has all the time in the world, it’s agonizingly slow to the point that Yuri burns in frustration. Otabek thrusts into him over, and over, and over again until Yuri’s making these pathetic little fucked out whimpering noises, and his cock hasn’t even been touched yet.

As if Otabek can read his mind, a stern warning comes from above. “Don’t touch yourself.”

Yuri whines in response.

Otabek’s thrusts, slow and powerful continue until the pressure and the heat become too much. His movements become erratic, and Otabek pulls out in fear of making Yuri gag once more.

Yuri desperately tries to mouth at the tip. Otabek spills in his mouth, on his lips, on his chest.

“Yuri,” Otabek pulls him upward, so that Yuri barely has time to notice how his knees are shaky and ache from hours on his feet, plus a few minutes on the hard bathroom tiles. His mouth is soft and assuring. “I love you Yuri.” He always does this. Goes from calm and demanding to mushy and sentimental the second after he comes.

“Love you too.” Yuri rests his forehead against Otabek’s and makes a pointed gesture to rub his very hard and very aching cock against his hip. “Gonna take care of me?”

“Of course.”

Otabek takes the time to dry them off with the big fluffy blue towel first, just as he’d anticipated. Despite the fact that he’s impossibly hard and leaking, he’s grateful. Yuri is finally ready to let Otabek take care of him, to sink into the mattress and come.

Otabek doesn’t let him get off that easily.

Otabek makes sure to turn the space heater in the bedroom on full blast. Then, he selects the merlot colored satin nightgown from the dresser. It’s not one that’s filled with snags, because Yuri’s fairly certain it’s _real_ satin, and not that cheap rough and shiny shit you get at the discount store. It’s got a tag stitched in it too, Victoria’s Secret. He doesn’t feel gross wearing second hand stuff if it’s nice like that.

The neckline plunges low. Yuri likes it because unlike most of the lingerie he owns it’s comfortable. No lace. The top portion has all kinds of stupid little strappy things that Otabek likes to thread his hands in. He also likes it because it cinches in at the waist and flares out at the hips. On a woman it’d go down to her ankles. On him it stops awkwardly a bit below the knee because he’s so tall.  

“What’s the point in putting this on, if you’re just going to take it off?”

Otabek bunches the bottom hem of the garment in his grasp and pulls it over Yuri’s head. Despite his complaints, Yuri complies. “So I can do this.” With one hand Otabek smooths the gown over Yuri’s thighs and engorged cock. With another he encircles Yuri’s satin covered nipple.

The fabric drags against Yuri’s skin at his chest and his groin despite the fact that it’s liquid smooth. It makes Yuri’s voice catch in his throat, makes his jaw go slack. “You’re fucking evil Altin,” he breathes out finally.

Otabeks’ response doesn’t come in the form of words. It comes in the form of a smirk. Strong hands on his hips that lead him to the bed, and guide him down onto the quilt.  It’s an old ugly patchwork thing that Otabek’s had since forever, and Yuri’s had to re-patch and resew more times than it’s worth.

Otabek props himself up against the headboard and has Yuri lay across his lap.

Yuri whines when Otabek’s hands shuck the nightgown up over his hips and his skin is re-exposed to the still too cold air of the room.

Otabek’s touch is so often indulgent and teasing. Yuri thought that’s what he was in for when Otabek selected the nightgown.

Yuri is pleasantly surprised to be incorrect. Otabek rustles around beneath him, and extracts the lube from deep within the mountains of pillows they keep regulated to the space up by the headboard. His fingers are immediate. Otabek pushes in one right away, the second with minimal resistance. Otabek loves working him open like this. Loves feeling him clench around his fingers. He admitted to him once, while Yuri was bouncing up and down on his cock and had Otabek at his mercy, that the feeling of Yuri clenching around his fingers was more intoxicating than fucking him. Otabek pulled out and fingered him until he came that night just to prove a point.  

Although it feels like _years ago_ at this point, it’s been less than day or so since Otabek’s worked him open like this.

“I meant it, Yuri. You were wonderful.” Otabek says with long rough strokes of his fingers. They brush against Yuri’s prostate without teasing or preamble.

Through the flashes of white in his vision, Yuri struggles against Otabek. He kicks his legs pathetically and grinds against his lap. The gown rustles and tangles beneath his legs, keeps him from gaining purchase against the bed. “Shut up. Would you just shut up? I didn’t do anything.”

“You did everything.”

Yuri hates this position despite the fact that it gives Otabek perfect access to his body. He can’t see Otabek, can’t kiss Otabek, can’t properly touch Otabek. All he can do is squirm meekly in the other man’s lap.

Otabek doesn’t respond right away.

Yuri feels Otabek’s hand, heavy and commanding grind down roughly into the small of his back. The gesture tells Yuri to hold still. Hold still and trust Otabek, because Otabek is the sun and the moon. The cue and the rack. The only thing he’s ever managed to do right.

Otabek adds another finger , and Yuri feels impossibly full. Knows in an instant that Otabek’s going to make him come with nothing more than his fingers, and that Yuri is infinity lucky for it. The way he opens him up is impossibly fucking good.

Yuri stills and gives into the feeling. The money doesn’t matter. Hustling doesn’t matter. The bills don’t matter. Today doesn’t matter. Otabek can say whatever the fuck he wants about Yuri and can be as wrong as he’d like. The only thing that matters are Otabek’s thick fingers and the drag of his cock against Otabek’s thigh and the nightgown Otabek pushed over his thighs.

In one fluid motion Otabek places his free hand on his hip and flips them over so that Yuri’s back is on the mattress, and Otabek is between his legs. “Don’t you get it Yuri?”

Otabek supports his own weight by pushing Yuri roughly into the mattress. Otabek’s fingers scissor apart and spread him wider still.

It doesn’t hurt, but it pushes Yuri to the very edge. Makes him feel stretched wider and fuller than he’s used to even when he takes Otabek’s cock. Makes tears prick at the corner of his eyes. Otabek’s hand feels so heavy and so hot, like irons set in a fire, they threaten to set him ablaze from within.

“Don’t you understand?”

No, Yuri doesn’t because he’s nothing without Otabek.

“I’m nothing without you.” Otabek’s fingers come back together, and rotate inside of him. Each thrust of his fingers asks a question, _why haven’t you come yet Yuri? I want it for you._

And each whine and upward cant of his hips responds, _I don’t know._

A stream of truly awful things comes out of Otabek’s mouth. “I love you.” _His fingers._ “I love you so much.” _His mouth._ “I want you forever,” and then he _finally_ shuts up by sinking lower and taking Yuri’s straining red cock into his mouth.

Yuri comes almost instantly.

Yuri tries to ignore the hot stream of tears that slide down his cheeks and burn hot like embers across his face. When he cannot, he tousles his face from side to side trying to wipe the tears onto the god-awful quilt.

“Yuri,” Otabek’s lips are on his. “Yuri, what’s wrong?” The words spill out too fast for Otabek’s normal tone. It’s clear that he’s worried, worried that he’s done something wrong, and _fuck._ Can’t Yuri do anything right?

“I’m fine.” He kisses Otabek again to prove his point. “I’m fine.” Yuri’s lucky. He’s real fucking lucky that he’s got someone that will begrudgingly kiss him when his mouth is caked with toxic dollar store lip gloss. Lucky that he’s got someone with a steady job to supplement the numerous fuckups that happen in between hustles that actually work out. Lucky that he’s got someone who tells him he’s beautiful, even when he’s rocking a shiner. Lucky, in some kind of fucked up way that whenever that happens, Otabek’s usually rocking a shiner too.

“Yuri is this about earlier?” Otabek crawls up his body and pulls him close. “I’m sorry.” Otabek lets his breath out in a long pained sigh. Yuri can feel the tension that Otabek carries from long hours at the garage and longer hours spent tending to his needs at the pool table take residence in his body once more.  His shoulders, his back, his legs. The way he sighs means his eyes have probably snapped, shut. His mouth pursed and the tension’s there now too. “ I should’ve asked. Asked if you wanted a backer.”

Yuri snorts against Otabek’s naked skin. It makes a sticky and ugly sound in between sobs. That’s what he thinks this is about? A fucking lie? What’s a lie when Otabek’s fucking perfect and Yuri’s fucking nothing?  What’s a lie if they’re both better for it at the end of the night? He was right to be angry at the time, but it’s hard to hold the grudge since it all turned out. “I don’t give a shit about that.” Yuri rakes his long white nails up Otabek’s back. The movement is rapid. He can’t enjoy the feeling of his skin, but he knows there’s the dimples of his back followed by the cute little knobs of his spine. “I just,” Yuri sighs. This is dumb. It’s been what, five years now? “I fucking love you.” Yuri buries his face in Otabek’s chest, silk and compact muscle and lets the tears flow freely. Like if Otabek can’t see his screwed up face, then he can’t hear the soft little sobs either. “Okay?”

“Yura,” Otabek’s voice is whisper soft. Soft and tender like he didn’t just fuck Yuri’s throat and finger him.  Or maybe softer still because that’s exactly what had just happened. “Yura,” Nobody ever fucking calls him that, except…well his mother. “It’s okay. I know.” Otabek rolls them over once more, so they’re laying on their sides facing one another. “I love you too.” Otabek grabs him firm over the hair behind the neck. Kisses him like it’s their first time in the waterbed, prom, Otabek’s graduation, and his eighteenth birthday all rolled into one. “I’m not going anywhere Yuri.”

* * *

 After the tears fade, and Otabek’s kissed them all away. After the shaking stops, and Otabek’s iron grip around his waist loosens, Yuri marches over to Otabek’s discarded coat and pulls the crumpled pack of Newport’s out of his pocket. He strikes it up with a discarded lighter that lives on the top of the dresser alongside discarded change and old receipts. Then, he marches back to bed.

Otabek squints his eyes as he’s enveloped by an acrid cloud of white gray smoke. “Those are for emergencies.” Despite the tinge of annoyance in his voice, Otabek presses a quick kiss to his temple before he gets up.

“I love you but-“ Yuri looks up at Otabek with half lidded eyes. “You’re a god awful manager,” Yuri lifts his head up from the pillow and reaches for the stack of money. He counts it out like Otabek did at the diner in swift yet fluid movements. Twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, one hundred. Then, he lets the stack of money he’d been counting fall onto his chest and his chin. A few bills fall into his lips and he spits them back out, but not before noting how the rough texture of the crisp twenties rub together and against his chapped lips.  Yuri ashes in a rose pink glass dish that stayed on the night stand despite the fact that they’d both “quit.”

Otabek’s grabbed one of the long discarded towels off of the floor and begins to dry his hair.  “Probably true,” Otabek agrees. From the dresser he pulls a pair of microfiber boxers, the kind that Yuri got him for Christmas. Yuri watches as Otabek bends at the waist and pulls them up over his ass and around his flaccid cock. Yuri wants him again.

Yuri watches him with rapt fascination as he swipes under each armpit with original Old Spice deodorant. “Fifty percent. What kind of bullshit is that?”

“He’d never seen you win. Only saw us run out on a mark.” Otabek meets his gaze in the mirror.

“Oh that night you fucked everything up because you had to fucking blow me in the bathroom.” Yuri blows the smoke out of his nose and watches it stream out in long silver gray tubes.  “So I’m right. It’s your fault, and you’re an awful manager.”

“I said it was probably true,” Otabek says with a tone that indicates he’s annoyed that they’re still talking about it.

Yuri looks at the overflowing metal hamper adorned with pink and orange flowers in the corner. He needs to do his laundry. He looks at the sick damp spot on his nightgown. Otabek needs to take this to get dry cleaned. The vacuuming needs to get done too, but they both hate doing it. Yuri takes a long drag and looks at the cigarette between his fingers. “I’ll quit again tomorrow.”

“You mean today?”

“No I mean tomorrow. Monday.”

Yuri doesn’t pick up a single bill. He just lets it linger on his chest and on the quilt. He grabs another stack off of the nightstand and starts counting it again.

“It’s not going anywhere you know.” Otabek says as he counts the money for what must be the twentieth time. The bills feel thick and filmy in his hand. Contrasts with the scrubbed raw feeling he has from just getting out of the shower.

“That’s fucking rich.” Their dresser has a big mirror attached. Stuck in the edges and corners of that mirror are all the fucking bills they’ve got to pay that month.

Yuri’s gaze meets Otabek’s in the mirror. Yuri snubs out the cigarette.

“Here,” Yuri sits up exhales the last of the smoke from his lungs. Then, he and hands Otabek half of the stack of cash. “You’re still a god awful manager.”  

Otabek shucks the towel off of his head. Doesn’t reach for the money, but instead reaches out for Yuri’s hand.

“I don’t want it,” Otabek circles the pulse point on Yuri’s wrist with his thumb. His tone sounds irritated, but his expression betrays him. His jaw is clenched, his eyes are focused on the dapple and wave of Yuri’s satin gown.  They’re dark with want, but Otabek is Otabek, and he’s not going to _just_ let this go and fuck him hard into the mattress. Otabek’s already come once, and with it his iron willed resolve is only reified. 

“We are not fucking doing this tonight,” Yuri says with a sigh.

“Today,” Otabek corrects.

“Whatever,” he sighs. He and Otabek have two fights. That isn’t to say they’ve only had two fights over the course of their relationship. Quite the contrary. Of course, they always revolve around one of two issues, the first being money, which they’ve already fought about tonight. The second...Yuri shoots a furtive glance to the thick red envelope that sits on top of the dresser. It’s purposefully wedged underneath some of Otabek’s library books, a stack of loose change, and a whole bunch of big gaudy costume jewelry he needs to put away. It’s _not_ wedged up into the mirror frame with the rest of the bills because he _does not_ want to think about it. Why did Otabek want to go two for two tonight?

It had been such a good night, and so far an even better today.

The fact of the matter is, Otabek graduated when Yuri was sixteen. Yuri told Otabek he’d stick it out, but that was a lie. There was no place for him at St. Peter’s and even less of a place there for him without Otabek. He dropped out the day after he turned seventeen.

Yuri and Otabek fought over it. Fought so hard that Yuri spent the night at his place, and Otabek spent the night at his parents place. That was the first time they’d spent a night apart in years.

Otabek went to college at the state university in the city because he was smart. Yuri got his GED. Otabek’s parents helped pay tuition, until they couldn’t. Yuri disappeared for two days with the pool cue and returned with tuition money. Otabek didn’t speak to him for three days after he returned.

Now they scraped and hustled together so Otabek could go part time and finish.  Yuri only applied because he thought he was going to get rejected anyway.

Guess who was fucking wrong? Like always.

“We’re not,” Otabek agrees. With his free hand he reaches for the stack of bills in Yuri’s hand and puts it on the night stand. “Monday though, when the bursar’s office is open.” In one swift and fluid movement Otabek joins Yuri in bed. He’s not so much on top of him as he is aggressively beside him. He’s still holding onto his arm. Has one leg thrown over Yuri’s. Then, Otabek’s mouth is on him. It’s a kiss that reflects the need in his eyes, makes it feel like they hadn’t just come together in the shower.

Yuri slaps against his chest. It’s not hard enough to be painful, but it’s more forceful than it is playful. “You really are the worst manager,” he says in a throaty voice when they part. “Take sixty percent. Seventy. I don’t give a fuck.”

“Yuri.” Otabeks hand drifts to his side, and toys with the soft satin of his nightgown. 

“How the fuck are we going to pay for that?” For once Otabek might actually want to drop it, and he’s going to fucking regret not letting it happen.

“Maybe your awful manager can help you.” Otabek takes a few bills into his hands and rubs them down Yuri’s arm.

Yuri watches Otabek’s mouth shift into a smile while Yuri simultaneously feels the hair on his arms stand up. Otabek rubs the bills across his forearm, his shoulder down his collarbones and across his chest.

“Feels good?”

“Yeah,” Yuri’s voice comes out more cracked and more husky than it should’ve.  

Otabek pushes the strap of the nightgown down his shoulder. He gives the other side the same treatment so that the gown is pulled taut across his chest just below his nipples.

“Keep playing?”

“If you wanted.”

“Otabek, what the fuck?” Otabek’s got a few mix of twenties and fifties in one hand and a few brightly watermarked hundreds in the other. Slowly Otabek rubs the bills across Yuri’s nipples. People think that money is just paper, but it’s not. It’s cloth, and paper, and ink, and all sorts of weird little things they put in there to make them harder to counterfeit. The bills feel simultaneously crisp and grainy at once from the slightly raised texture on the logos. It catches his skin and sends an electric current that’s far more addictive than booze, or cigarettes, or gambling coursing through his veins.

“Said it felt good.” Otabek continues to rub the bills over Yuri’s body. His nipples harden under Otabek’s touch, and then he moves back up his collar bones. Then, he touches the bills back to Yuri’s lips.

Yuri snatches them up and inhales the scent deeply. “Smells good too.” There’s easily a thousand dollars or more spread across his chest and his hips when he presses into Otabek again to kiss him. He doesn’t care. He pushes appetizers and refills fountain sodas for ones and fives, he’ll dig underneath the bed later for twenties and fifties. He kisses Otabek the way Otabek likes to be kissed. With a warmth, and an openness, and a level of rawness that Yuri’s still doesn’t feel completely comfortable with after all this time.

But he could be.

Could be for Otabek.

Yuri grabs for another stack of bills, then another and another. Until the awful hounds tooth stitched against chevron stitched against paisley stitched against argyle stitched against the world’s ugliest shade of burnt orange are blocked out by nothing but bills.

Much like Otabek pulled the nightgown on over his head earlier, Otabek peels it off in the same way. Clumsily, with slow awkward movements over his shoulders and his head so that he doesn’t accidentally knock Yuri in the face.

Yuri pulls the microfiber boxers off. They’re soft to the touch, but almost feel matted and rough in comparison to the silk of Otabek’s skin, whose softness is only intensified by the soft downy body hair that Yuri finds wherever his fingers linger. Otabek’s hard, just from teasing him. “We could do that.”

Otbek pulls him forward by the hips and their cocks slide together just right. “Do what?

Yuri wraps a hand around both of them and drags it upward. He scrambles for purchase against the bills which are spilled everywhere, but manages to get himself pushed up on one elbow and keep thrusting. “Keep playing,” he says between short static AM radio gasps for air.

“Christ, Plisetsky.” Otabek pants between long open mouthed kisses. “You want to keep talking about that now?” Otabek shakes his head like he’s ready to drop it.

“Of course I do.” Yuri says with a grin. They’ve always been shit with boundaries. Why start thinking about them now.

“On your stomach,” Otabek orders.  

“Yes, Mr. Manager,” Yuri obeys. With his hips propped high in the air and the rest of his body flat on the bed the scent of money is strong like overcooked chemicals and paper toner.  He can feel nothing but the grit of money against him and Otabek pushing inside of him.

It’s so wonderful. Thick and hot and wonderful in the way that it splits him open and makes him forget his name let alone anything else like his problems.

The featherlight touch of his finger traces his rim. “It’s really pretty Yuri.”

Until he says shit like that.

Yuri screws his eyes shut and purses his lips together. “Oh, my god. Shut the fuck up and fuck me.” But underneath the sickly sweet misplaced romanticism of his words, Otabek might be right. There is something lovely about the fact that he’s so stretched open and ready from earlier that Otabek can just move his pliant body around and fuck him. It’s lovely how they trust, and how they take, and how they give.

He's reminded that he’s lucky for what might be the second time, or the hundredth time that night. Yuri’s not really sure at this point.

Yuri lifts his body off of the bedframe so that he’s kneeling in front of Otabek instead of being in the original doggy style position. Otabek doesn’t falter, just gives him long and uneven strokes that hit his prostate every time.

Yuri turns his head to the side, “wanna kiss you.” The request is _not_ the same as Otabek saying his fucking asshole looks pretty. He’s done crying, and in its wake is something that’s far more raw and exposed and dangerous.

Of course, Otabek complies. The kiss is far heavier and more demanding than Otabek’s thrusts. Yuri assumes that the pent-up lust-want-need in the kiss is only disguised in the rest of Otabek’s movements because he doesn’t want to come too quickly.

The assumption is confirmed with erratic touches to his nipples, his hips, and his stomach. Otabek takes Yuri into his fist and brings him over the edge with just a few thrusts. Otabek doesn’t last long after that. His thrusts are harsh and erratic. Yuri loves feeling the way Otabek twitches and jerks as he comes inside.

“Hey Otabek?” Yuri asks with his eyes barely open. He can feel Otabek trying to wipe him clean with a wet rag, but none of it really registers in his brain as anything noteworthy or coherent. He’s finally ready to sleep now. He’s ready to just sleep on top of his money and smell it, but Otabek probably won’t let him.

“Hm?”

“You know…I’m lucky.” He doesn’t open his eyes to look at Otabek, but the muscles of his face pull into a serious expression anyway. Because he’s serious. Seriously lucky.

Otabek rejoins him in bed. Yuri can feel him grab for bills all over the bed. “Me too Yuri.” Then, there’s a kiss at his temple, then his cheek, then his mouth. “I think I’m pretty lucky too.”

 


	5. Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp this AU was initially intended to be a one shot, then I planned for 4 chapters, 16k words total. So here we are 26k words or so and five chapters. But it's been really fun to write. Shout out to everyone who has given my trash AU a chance.

“Otabek Altin,” his name rolls thick off her tongue like the “orange juice” in the tequila sunrise she bought for both of them. Whatever it _actually_ is it tastes like the infamous “juice from a can” that Yuri’s mother used to pop open and pour into a large green plastic pitcher, and far too much grenadine.  It sounds like “All-teen,” and it rolls off her mouth awkwardly. “Let’s play, just the girlfriends.” She pauses and takes a sip from her drink and grimaces. Although Otabek can’t discern if it’s from the strength of the liquor or the foulness of the juice. “Fifty a game?” She laughs, gets up into his space and flicks the tip of his nose with the pad of her finger gently, and that’s how Otabek knows for sure.

Isabella Yang half a tequila sunrise to shitfaced. Under normal circumstances there are no other men on the planet except for Jean Jacques Leroy. Her devotion to Leroy’s game is impressive. She’s always nearby with the chalk, or a fresh drink, or a kiss.

Now her face is flushed as red as her dress. The fact that she’s acknowledging him, let alone trying her hardest to _playfully_ insult him is a bit too much to digest.

Still, something like a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, because he and Yuri get called a lot of things. It’s funny, and quite possibly a first, that Otabek’s the one being referred to as the girlfriend.  Maybe it speaks to the way that Yuri has commanded thousands upon thousands of dollars from high rollers since that infamous Valentine’s Day game. His masculinity is solidified through winning.

Maybe it speaks to her own prowess as a manager.

“Not as girlfriends. Managers,” Otabek agrees finally.  

“Otabek!” Yuri’s voice sounds like gravel. It pulls him back to reality. Yuri’s down by a couple hundred this night, but he’s is on an unapologetic winning streak overall. The last few months have been impossibly good, and it looks like the game is about to even out. Yuri’s run eighty or so balls against Leroy, and Leroy is consistently running fifty or sixty, but never quite breaking it.

 “Don’t go betting out of _my_ purse,” Yuri huffs.  

“Right, right.” Otabek goes for the McDermott. The one with that says _“_ Georgi.” The cue is more or less _his_ now that Yuri’s got his own cue with a triple digit price tag. Fifty-nine inches long, and no engraved name at the end. They’ve never met another Yuri on the pool scene before. Yuri said that he, “would literally die,” if he lost it in a bet, and someone else ended up running around time with a cue with _his_ name.

From the corner of his eye, he watches Yuri rapidly approach the side rail and lean into a shot too quickly. It’s gonna be a rough shot. One into the seven into the left corner pocket.

“Shit!” Yuri exclaims. He’d clearly wanted the seven too. Yuri despite his skill and his recent lucky streak, still gets greedy. Even over

“Izzy,” JJ steps over to his manager. “Please bet out of my money.” As if to punctuate his point, he pulls a wad of bills out of his pocket and thrusts them into Isabella’s hands. The gesture is stupid and pointless because they all know that Isabella has most of JJ’s money stowed in her coach purse, just like they all know that Otabek has most of Yuri’s money in his wallet.

“Hey fuck off,” and before he knows it, Yuri’s thrusting a fistful of twenties into his hand. “I was kidding. Play with my money Otabek. It’s not a problem. We’re up you know.” His voice escalates into a loud growl that threatens to make the lamps which hang over the tables shake.  “Really up. Because of the Grand-Prix.”

Having a backer hasn’t gone south. Not yet. It’s gotten Yuri a number of high profile games, and got him lots of attention. So much so that he was asked to represent _Recreation at Chris’_ at a high rollers tournament out of town.

 Yuri left with _second_ in his division and enough to pay for some long lingering expenses, and a new cue.

“Of course I know,” Otabek responds to the tournament mention, which is an artfully coded plea of, “please don’t start, Yuri.”

“We were there Princess. We came in _first,”_ Leroy interjects.

Yuri steps up into his space, plucks the tequila sunrise from his grasp, and drains the half full glass in one go.

“You’re gonna feel great during class tomorrow,” Otabek says when Yuri places the empty glass back into his waiting fingers.

 “Don’t care.” Yuri covers his mouth and his eyes go wide as he lets out a loud belch. “Don’t tell him,” he whispers under his breath. “I might be having fun.”

“Nah,” Otabek plays with the tips of the strands of Yuri’s long hair.

Despite the fact that he’d never thought he’d see the day that they’d play Leroy and Yang for the fun of it, he doesn’t quite mind. At $100 a game, Yuri could leave here with a decent amount of money without risking the bulk of their bankroll.  

He can tell that Yuri’s having something like fun. There’s the small tug of a smile at either side of his face, and the way that he takes shots fast and loose without really paying attention. Not to mention, if Yuri didn’t play for less than a hundred before, he rarely played for less than five hundred now that half of it went to Chris at the end of the night. It’s not ideal, but it’s the best way he knows how to get over his personal issues with having a backer. Five hundred a game is a hustle. One hundred a game is nice and friendly.

“Are you going to shoot sweetheart?”

“Right,” Yuri gives him a peck on the mouth. “Don’t fucking lose.”

“Same to you Plisetsky.”

“You gotta lotta room to talk Leroy. You take for fucking ever to shoot.” Yuri steps into the table and pockets the seven without really doing much more than flicking his wrist.

Otabek leans into the adjacent table and racks the balls in a tight triangle. “Can I break for you?” He asks Isabella.

“Please.”

Otabek gives her a clean break. The kind he loves to give Yuri. Textbook breaks that hit all the rails and leave endless opportunities. He steps back just in time to watch Yuri sink the eight ball on the next table over.

“That makes 120, asshole.”

“JJ is nonplussed,” he says with a laugh and throws another hundred on the rail.

Yuri certainly wouldn’t consider the four of them friends. They’d never interact outside of a pool hall. Yet, they’re more than simple marks. Now Yuri sees the game beyond a quick one time hustle. Wants to get better, and beat JJ consistently, not just in once in a lifetime high rolling games.

At home, most of the bills are paid.

The whole situation, despite this being the reality of their lives now, is strange.

* * *

Yuri stares at the projector screen through purple lensed, oversized sunglasses. In the back of his mind, Otabek’s voice, that mixture of sternness and concern warns him, “You’re going to feel great in class tomorrow.”

It’s fine and everything’s fine. He’s sitting up in the balcony today, so he can zone out without feeling rude.

His head feels foggy. _Maybe_ there’s a little pressure there if he thinks too hard about lecture, but he’s dealt with worse before. Sure, his mouth is that weird combination of dry like sandpaper and watery like pre-barf that only comes after a long night of drinking, but it’s fine. His gut is a little queasy too, but who is counting?

Yuri sinks a bendy straw into the blue bottle of Gatorade he’d picked up before class. Then carefully, he unwraps a large frosted zebra cake from its cellophane wrapper.

At the very least this will help him get through the final throes of the hangover.

Carefully, he bites off the corners of the hexagonal cake in small nibbles in between taking notes. The sound of Dr. Weaver’s voice is enough to lull him to sleep most lectures, but today is especially arduous.

The frosting feels thick and filmy in his mouth. Makes the gross watery pre-barf feeling intensify. He can vaguely remember scarfing a Christmas snack cake of similar texture and taste in the parking lot outside the high school before he took the exam for his G.E.D. He’d been hungover on cheap tequila. Yuri shudders at the long repressed memory. Quickly he takes a sip of the sports drink to get rid of the taste.

It’s going to be a long lecture.

* * *

“Yuri!” Otabek’s voice is just louder than his average speaking voice, yet, Yuri can pick it up over the sound of the crowd instantly.

Yuri turns his head and scans the crowd for Otabek. Fucking Ballentine hall is always so goddamn crowded this time of day when lecture gets out. It’s got several giant lecture halls inside. For example, his introduction to exercise science had three hundred people in it, easy.

Otabek had class upstairs in one of the smaller rooms. Boring library science bullshit 4001 or something like that.

Otabek makes leaning up against a shitty mint green Formica wall look way better than anybody should. The calendar might say September, but it’s hot as balls outside still. As such, Otabek’s wearing little more than a plain white t-shirt, and these jet black jeans that just make Yuri pant. Yuri darts over to his side. 

Otabek rocks up on the balls of his feet to bridge the distance between him and Yuri. The kiss is rough, and with a bit too much teeth, but Yuri kisses back all the same.

“How was class?” Otabek asks when they part.  

“Uhhhh,” Honestly, it had been one of the longest eighty minutes of his life. In addition to his physical condition, Yuri still feels like he’s a fraud on campus. Other than a few thousand dollars, there’s not much that separates _now_ from all the semesters in the past when he used Otabek’s ID to sneak onto the computers in the library. Or he’d use it to go the gym.  Sure, that few grand gets him his own student ID, and his own print quota and towel punch card. But it’s only when Otabek’s nearby that the itchy feeling beneath his skin fades. He feels like he belongs.

“Well I didn’t barf, and guess I know more about sport psychology than I did an hour ago,” Yuri supplies. “Arousal regulation,” he wriggles his eyebrows suggestively.

“I feel like it’s a different kind,” Otabek says with a small smile that looks pained. As if to say without so much as speaking, “that was awful Yuri.”

“Yeah, well how was advanced book studies?”

“It’s a network analysis course.”

Yuri knows that, network analysis with Professor Choi. It’s fun to fuck around though. He laces his fingers in-between Otabek’s and they cut out the back, to the weird little rock garden between buildings.

“It was good. We’re writing syntax now.”

Yuri screws up his face in concentration. There’s a fragment of a prior conversation with a similar topic buried somewhere in his brain. “In STATA?”

“R,” Otabek supplies. “I don’t know why, but did use it in another course.”

 “Hm,” Yuri says effectively closing off the conversation. “What time are we meeting that old fag couple for dinner?” Yuri fishes a pack pink Bubble Yum from the pocket of his jean shorts. The piece is sticky against the paper from his body heat, but it’s technically “better” than a cigarette. He chomps on it immediately.

“Viktor and Yuuri?” Otabek asks softly. “You know,” Otabek responds sternly in a voice that’s usually reserved for Yuri when he’s piss drunk, or they’re flat broke, or both. “We’re gonna be that “old fag couple” someday.”

“Nah, cause we’re never gonna get hitched and have a cutesy little ballet studio and work at it together. We’re never gonna teach suburban kids dance while their moms click their tongues and disapprove of our, “lifestyle.” Yuri corrects.

Otabek’s flat expression switches to one that’s pinched and pained. As if Yuri kicked him by even suggesting that they’d never own a goddamn dance studio together, which seemed fucking stupid. Otabek wanted to be like, a head sexy librarian, or sexy metadata guy, or a sexy law librarian or something. Otabek changes what it is that he wants to do all the damn time, but Yuri always tacks “sexy” on the front for some kind of consistency.

“You told me eight-thirty,” Otabek finally responds to the initial question.  

“Right,” Yuri says trying to hide the fact that he absolutely knew what time they were supposed to meet. “And it’s what, 4:00 now?”

Otabek glances at the watch strapped to his wrist. “More or less.”

“Ugh, that’s such a weird time for dinner. I’m pretty sure they don’t even have a night class,” Yuri huffs.

“Wanna go home and sleep it off?” Otabek asks with a hint of bemusement in his voice. Otabek drank a lot last night too, but he seems better off than Yuri this afternoon.

 “No,” Yuri responds quickly. “Otabek,” Yuri blows a bubble and lets it pop against his lips. “It’s _Thursday.”_ He snaps the gum back into his mouth and doesn’t even try to hide the lilt in his voice. “Three dollar Thursday,” the rest doesn’t have to be said out-loud. Everybody who is anybody gets their asses down to Village Idiot for three dollar long islands on Thursday. “Thirsty Thursday,” he keeps talking because once he’s settled on an idea, he doesn’t let it go.

Otabek shoots him a skeptical look. “Hair of the dog then?”

Yuri wraps a slender arm around Otabek’s waist and let his hand drop down low to the other man’s hip. He goes in for the kill, a casual squeeze on Otabek’s left cheek. Something that will surely get him glared at.

“No!” Yuri can feel the white hot intensity of Otabek’s glare upon him even though he’s staring straight ahead at the brick path that leads down between the Chemistry building and the weird castle looking building and down toward the commuter lot.

Okay maybe just a little one to clear the fog in his head. But nothing more.

Yuri reluctantly lets go of Otbek’s ass so he can dart out in front of him, “I wanna do _trick shots,”_ he says with wide eyes and wildly gesticulating hands. “Please?” he adds because they did ride together after all. Otabek was well in his rights to not want to spend the third Thursday afternoon in a row down at the bar just so Yuri can earn $100 or so bucks in the most arduous way he knows how.

Seriously, working the worst of shifts at Nishi’s fifty or sixty bucks was easier than dealing with the boat shoe boys and long island girls who’d been skipping class and drinking since noon.

“If I get any takers, that’s more house money for later,” Yuri reasons. But he knows that Otabek’s already going to go along with it.

Yuri’s always been drawn to “easy” money. And here’s the thing about easy money. It’s never so easy, but Otabek’s usually willing to go along for the ride.

* * *

Village Idiot is the kind of college bar you see in movies. There are signed university sports jerseys on the wall alongside tacky promotional items for every kind of liquor imaginable. Neon signs for beer, little decorative flags for whiskey, the patio umbrellas bear the logo for a long discontinued flavor of gin. There’s Christmas lights strung up on the top shelf all year round, and Yuri’s pretty sure he’s never been served by anyone older than twenty-two or so.

The patio is brimming with sun kissed girls in crop tops and men in salmon colored shorts, and Yuri can only hope that the right kind of people are inside.

Cause even though he doesn’t really _plan_ on making a mint, Otabek’s seen his trick shots so many times it’s hard to impress him with them.

Not to mention that by now, Otabek can _make_ most of the trick shots he knows.

Yuri leads Otabek up the rickety metal stairs that start down on the sunny patio and lead up to the inky blackness of the inner bar. The contrast in lighting makes his vision burn white.

But Yuri isn’t blinded completely. In the room with the two pool tables, almost half of the tables are occupied by city kids with cheap clothes. Not the kind that Yuri gets at the second hand store or marked down. The kind that you buy at the mall and throw away after a few wears. The kind that you pair with $500 handbags.

Yuri and Otabek begin a game casually. The clink of the balls is a soothing contrast to the fast and unrelenting clatter-clatter-thunk that they’ve heard almost endlessly since the night at Chris’.

“It’s nice isn’t it?” Otabek asks after their second game.

“Hm?” Yuri’s in the midst of cramming more gum into his mouth. He’d never admit it out loud, but without a cigarette and without a beer he feels completely naked in the bar. Even with the splintered old cue in his hand.

“We haven’t played a game in awhile. Just me and you.” Otabek takes the cue in one hand and lets the butt rest against the floor. With the other hand, pulls Yuri close with the other. Otabek dusts a few feather light kisses to his clothed shoulder, his neckline which is exposed by his low cut top, wherever he can reach without really trying. “No money,” _kiss._ “No hustle,” _kiss._ “Nobody looking at you,” _kiss_ , “the way only I can look at you.” That time Otabek does try and reach. Yuri makes sure that he succeeds. The kiss rapid, sloppy, and full of tongue just the way Yuri likes it.

“Just cause you’re not playing manager doesn’t mean you get to be a sap Altin.” But Yuri makes sure to bend over the table with great care, rack in movements that are slow and sweet like molasses. “So give me a good break,” a smile pulls at the corner of Yuri’s mouth, so he makes sure to send it Otabek’s way, “baby.”

“I wanna nine ball break, Yuri.”

“I don’t play nine ball.”

“I know.”

Yuri shifts the balls across the rough green felt that needs to be redone. As requested, Yuri moves them into a tight nine ball diamond.  Then, Otabek does as he’s told. Gives him a good break. Like always.

Except, Otabek is wild and defiant in that quiet and subtle way that only Otabek can be. He hits the cue near the right corner pocket. Hits the red seven ball diagonally which sends the diamond formation scattering. The one and the nine go into the right side pocket. The four and the six go to the far side pocket. The seven and the two into the left corner pocket. The three into the right corner pocket. The rest bounce back and hit the near pockets.

Otabek’s sunk all the balls on the break.

Scratch it. Yuri thought that Otabek couldn’t impress him. He’s wrong. Can barely pick his jaw up off the dirty hard wood floor. He’s never seen Otabek do that before.

“Holy fuck dude,” one of the college boys at the nearest table saw what happened, and vocalizes what Yuri was thinking. “Bet you can’t make that shot again.”

“Probably not,” Otabek admits nonchalantly. “But I will bet you ten dollars that _he_ can.”

Yuri feels the sting of male eyes upon him. Not just the guy who asked for a bet, but the rest of their group. He knows the feeling well. The burn starts in his stomach and spreads down to his toes and goes to the tips of his fingers. As scummy as it makes him feel he knows that they’re sizing up the high waisted denim shorts and the white ruffle shirt he’s wearing. Yuri’s offensive in the worst kind of way. They’re not just gonna offer twenty.

“We’ll bet you twenty that he can’t.”

Yuri bites the soft flesh of his cheek. Cause he’s fine with Otabek holding the bank roll and calling the shots, but he’s not about to be talked to _through_ Otabek.

Yuri butts into the conversation. “You gotta rack the balls for me though,” Yuri considers how he should punctuate the sentence. He waffles between wanting to call them, “fuckers,” and wanting to call them, “pretty boys,” just to make them uncomfortable. In the end he does neither. Instead he simply bats his long blonde lashes at them and cocks his head toward the table.

Otabek talks the two young men through racking for a nine ball break. The two men who take interest, their steps are heavy and laden with alcohol. They giggle and slap against each other’s cut off t-shirts. Yuri wonders if they’ve ever jerked each other off. They look like the type. The type who are made uncomfortable by his clothes and his lace and his pearls because it reminds them of some ugly part of themselves.

He looks to their girlfriends, who probably aren’t their girlfriends, they’re probably, “just talking.’ They sit at the table which is laden with empty pitchers and plastic cups still heady with foam. They swipe at their phones and get snap chat ready on the chance that he is successful.

One girl wears a dark plum colored lipstick, the other nude. By lip stain alone they deserve better.

“Thanks,” he says in the direction of the marks, but looks at Otabek the whole time.

Yuri inhales sharply, and approaches the table slowly. It’s unlike when he’s in the heat of a game. Twenty dollars is nothing these days, at least when it comes to pool. It’s still a decent chunk of money, but the gambling purse is separate from the bill purse these days.

Yuri can actually allow himself to think about it. He’s gonna shoot opposite of Otabek just for show. It’s a shot for Otabek’s eyes only. A shot to show Otabek he can go from the left just because he can and just because he loves him. He imagines the cue connecting between the one and the five at the corner, the nine and then shooting everything outward.

Yuri takes the shot.

It’s better than he imagined. It’s not clean like Otabek’s shot. There’s a bit more bouncing around, and it makes Yuri’s breath hitch. But there’s two in each side pocket. One in each corner, and everything glides to the near pockets. The fact that it’s messy makes it better. Makes the drunk college boys hold their breath, makes it look like bad luck on their part. Good luck on Yuri’s part.

They all go in, and unlike if this were a game of real pool between hustlers they laugh and whoop and holler. There’s no swearing, no fists, no threats.

“That’s so fucking cool,” and “Oh, my gawd,” and “Wow, did you get that?” followed by, “Send it to me.”

The money is collected from the table in the form of crumpled fives and tens and heavy complaints between them. “I’ll show you another for ten and a bloody Mary.”  cause fuck it. As obnoxious as these fuckers are, it’s kind of infectious. They have that drunk at four in the afternoon, money never ends,  and the worries aren’t real kind of attitude. It’s a feeling that he and Otabek have been chasing for _years._

To his surprise, more people come in from the outdoor balcony to watch, and as such another ten gets thrown down on the rail, as does a tall glass filled with bright red liquid. The celery sticking out from up top looks particularly wilted and pathetic.  

“Show them the curveball Yuri.” He’d expected Otabek to chide him for drinking, but his voice is light and airy in a way that it usually is only after a _long_ bout of playful ribbing, or tickles under the covers.

“Alright,” He takes the wilted celery and chomps at it despite it’s wilted state. It’s worse than bubblegum, and still technically better than a cigarette.

Yuri sets the eight ball down by the left corner pocket, and then walks back to the right hand side. He places the cue at the right corner pocket. He holds the cue almost perpendicular to the table and taps down hard on the cue ball. It glides in a lovely U shaped arch as far out as the third diamond and then back to the right hand side. It knocks the eight ball in perfectly.

By now there are fifteen or so people watching. Yuri usually hates an audience, but trick shots are a little different. More drinks appear on the rail, but less money. It’s how these things usually go. Yuri circles around the table and brushes up against Otabek, who is handling money and eyeing a beer that’s appeared on the rail.

“Warming up for later?” Otabek poses it as a question, but Yuri knows it’s a statement.

“I don’t know.” Yuri reaches around Otabeks middle for the rack, which had been discarded to the far end of the table for the last trick. “Does my awful manager think he’ll have a game for me?”

Otabek flashes him a smile. The kind that he’d like to keep locked away in a drawer and keep for Yuri and Yuri alone. The smile that he’s increasingly forced to give Yuri across pool tables and bar rooms as they keep playing and keep winning. “Depends on if you’re hot tonight.”

Yuri leans forward and racks the balls. He then plucks the eight ball out of the center of the rack and places it just a few inches away from the rack. Once more he places his cue perpendicular to the table and hits the ball with a rapid downward motion. It pops upward, and flies into the vacant space in the middle of the rack.

“Always baby.”


End file.
